Thread by @billscher

The filibuster didn't start to foster bipartisanship, and it didn't start to perpetuate slavery or Jim Crow.

It started in Ancient Rome.

I explain here
realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/… but first a thread...

The person who deserves the most credit for inventing the filibuster is Cato the Younger, though the Romans called it "diem consumere" or to consume the day. (See @GoodmanRob1 & @jimmyasoni theatlantic.com/politics/archi… & politico.com/magazine/story… ) ...

Cato's (talking) filibusters were not designed to foster compromise. They were obstructionist tactics designed to stop wealth consolidation and authoritarianism.

He tried to slow Caesar's roll. When he failed, rather than live under Caesar's rule, he killed himself...

Cato isn't a random historical oddity unrelated to America. The Founders revered Cato.

Washington's soldiers performed a play about Cato during their brutal stay in Valley Forge. "Give me liberty or give me death" is a modified line from that play...

It is often noted that the filibuster isn't in the Constitution or the initial congressional rules. True. But it's also not *not* in the initial rules.

And there is evidence of dilatory tactics as early as 1790. (See @CatherineFisk1 & Erwin Chemerinsky jstor.org/stable/1229297 )

Jefferson did have a line in his rules manual (which formally ran the House and informally the Senate) saying no one should "speak impertinently or beside the question." But it was not strictly followed...

These were people who knew about Rome. They could have passed an explicit ban on "diem consumere" if they didn't like how Jefferson's guidance was being ignored. They didn't...

You may have read the filibuster inadvertently grew from VP Aaron Burr's 1805 recommendation that the Senate rules remove the "previous question motion." This was recently circulated by @jonathanchait nymag.com/intelligencer/… This isn't being dishonestly spread, but it's not true

The Burr argument rests on the fact that the House kept PQ and used it to cut off debate. But as @GregoryKoger details mischiefsoffaction.com/post/aaron-bur… in the 19th century the House had *more* filibusters than the Senate, even with PQ on the books...

...Koger's overarching point is legislative majorities *always* can interpret rules however they want. Ergo, if the legislative filibuster is still here, it's because there hasn't been a majority of Senators to get rid of it. Ever.

...

Awkwardly sitting alongside the filibuster-is-an-accident thesis is the filibuster-is-the-deliberate-creation-of-racists thesis.

In "Kill Switch" @AJentleson says all filibusters between Reconstruction and 1964 killed civil rights bills. This is not true...

As @bindersab and @ProfStevenSmith show in "Politics or Principle" amazon.com/Politics-Princ… between Reconstruction and 1949, "the number of non-civil rights measures blocked by filibuster [was] about as large as the number of civil rights measures killed by filibuster"...

From that book, Here is a list of filibusters from that period...

Of course, that list does not negate that the fact that segregationists were the dominant and most effective users of the filibuster during that period. But it undercuts the argument that the filibuster is inherently racist...

...Chait argues, "nobody ever would create a system like this on purpose." But the modern "silent" filibuster was created on purpose, by Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield in 1970, as @bindersab explained here washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/… ...

...Senators were tired of talking filibusters preventing any other votes from taking place. So Mansfield invented a "two-track" system. Filibuster happens on one track, other business on the other. (This is not a rule. Schumer could go back to talking filibusters at any time.)...

...Now *some* Senators are tired of the silent filibuster. But not a majority. As Koger states, "For advocates of Senate reform, this poses an awkward truth: the Senate filibuster has persisted to this point because lots of senators have supported it."...

None of the above means that *you* have to support the filibuster. It can be a bad, anti-majoritarian, obstruction of the popular will on its own, regardless of the history. But the case should be made on its own merits, not with twisted history.