A filibuster is cool but mob rule isn’t

Published 9:53 pm Saturday, June 29, 2013

By Staff Reports

 

Texas Sen. Wendy Davis is awesome — and wrong. The protesters who crashed the final hours of the Legislature’s special session are wrong, too, but they’re not awesome. They’re just awful.

We can praise Davis and pan the protestors at the same time because of a single principle. We live in a representative democracy, not a pure democracy. A pure democracy can (and usually does) devolve into mob rule.

That’s what happened Tuesday night, in the closing hours of the session.

“Hundreds of jeering protesters helped stop Texas lawmakers from passing one of the toughest abortion measures in the country, shouting down Senate Republicans and forcing them to miss a midnight deadline to pass the bill,” the Associated Press reports. “Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, spent most of the day staging an old-fashioned filibuster, attracting wide support, including a mention from President Barack Obama’s campaign Twitter account.”

On the surface, Davis’ action — filibustering a bill — and the crowd’s action — shouting down the Senate so that members couldn’t vote — look much the same. The purpose and effect of both was to slow or prevent the passage of a bill that would impose higher standards on abortion clinics.



But underneath, the actions couldn’t be more different.

The filibuster is a valuable tool lawmakers can use to ensure that those in the voting minority can participate in the political process. Sure, it’s frustrating to those in the voting majority, but they know that eventually, they’ll be on the other side. They will need that tool themselves.

Many of the Republicans in the Texas Senate who expressed anger at Davis’ filibuster no doubt supported U.S. Sen. Rand Paul’s 13-hour filibuster in March, when he held up an Obama administration appointee over drone policies.

Davis demonstrated her awesomeness on Tuesday by standing and talking for nearly that long, passionately advocating her position. Her tone was always civil. She answered all questions put to her. She bravely wore hideous sneakers in public for the political marathon.

We can respect Davis, yet disagree with her position. The bill she helped shoot down is a reasonable restriction on abortion providers. After horrifying conditions were revealed about Pennsylvania abortionist Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s clinic, lawmakers are right to seek higher medical standards for Texas facilities.

But the jeering crowd that kept the Senate from doing its business Tuesday night is different. While the filibuster is a tool used to prevent the “tyranny of the majority,” shouting down lawmakers by sheer volume is an example of “tyranny of the majority.”

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst was right to call it “an unruly mob,” because that’s what mob rule is. It’s a deliberate assault on the legitimate political process.

And mobs take no prisoners. In the crowd’s effort to derail one bill, it prevented some other important bills from being passed. As state Sen. Robert Nichols pointed out on Wednesday, a vital bipartisan transportation bill died, as well.

Gov. Rick Perry has already called a new special session to fix these failings — Sen. Davis’ admirable efforts, and the deplorable actions of the crowd, notwithstanding.