I'm reading a story in the Los Angeles Times about how close Al Franken (the former Saturday Night Live writer and performer, and author of Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot) is close to unseating the Republican incumbent senator, Norm Coleman, in Minnesota, and I hit a paragraph that just stops me cold.
All this comes at a time when Democrats, who have a bare majority in the Senate, hope to pick up enough seats Nov. 4 to be able to prevent Republican filibusters. Thirty-five seats are up for grabs -- 23 of them held by Republicans -- and Democrats need to gain nine to reach a filibuster-proof majority of 60.
Imagine what it would mean for one party to have that kind of unchecked power. It should scare even loyal Democrats.
That's assuming, of course, Obama wins the White House and the Democrats maintain majority in the House. That's a pretty safe assumption.
Regular readers know I'm no fan of either political party, and that I often make noise about the Republocrat Plutocracy.
That's more a matter of neither party not caring much about pursuing the interests of the people they're sworn to represent, and that on many issues, the differences are nuance rather substantive.
But in either party, there are extremes. For the Republicans, its the extreme social conservative agenda that tends to tamp down moderates (hence, an unqualified Sarah Palin picked to run with McCain because McCain has about zero appeal to the base). For the Democrats, the extreme is a mix of anti-business, anti-wealth, pro-government solutions to societal problems almost socialism.
There are two things that keep extreme agendas in check under our current system -- the other party, and just enough wiggle room in each party for moderates to buck the party line.
You've got to ask yourself -- if the Democrats have unchecked power, will the moderates in the party be able to move freely to oppose the more extreme measures the Nancy Pelosis of the world might want to pursue? What kind of traitorous bastard would you be as a Democratic senator if you launched a filibuster in against your own party?
How many times do you think Obama will use the veto pen against a Democrat-dominated Legislature?
If we did not allow the Republicans and the Democrats so much power to prevent third parties from becoming contending alternatives, we wouldn't be facing this situation today. It would be much harder for either party to achieve a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. The House would be much more divided. We would be much closer to the republic the Founders intended that essentially one-party rule system (which is about to become the one-party tyranny system) we have today.
Right now, we can only hope that Barack Obama is sensible enough not to take advantage of the level of unchecked power he's going to have as president.
