Convoluted Legislative Weirdness Won't Matter

I do recommend everyone read Sarah Binder's explainer about the parliamentary situation with the CR and defunding.

But I do want to add my two cents to one aspect of this that's had some people talking. I don't think it will make any real difference at all that technically the defunders are asking Republican Senators to filibuster a bill which, at that point, will actually contain the provision they want. Nor, come to think of it, should it.

On whether it will make a difference: c'mon. The main audience for this whole thing is the Fox News/Limbaugh conservative marketplace. If they like the product, they aren't going to undercut it by highlighting a bit of procedural mumbo-jumbo that sounds bad. They will not report it. It won't happen, for that audience. For the liberal audience -- yup, they'll ridicule Ted Cruz over it. But if it wasn't that, it would be something else. It doesn't matter. So that leaves the "neutral" press, and, yes, they might be somewhat influence by the convoluted legislative weirdness involved, but that's going to be one factor, and probably a small one, in one type of reporting. Republicans would be nuts to let that affect their votes.

And it shouldn't. Look, it's funny that Republicans have to filibuster their own bill if they want it to pass, but it is also the dead honest truth. It "looks" bad? Only if people are watching -- and given how obscure the procedural stuff here is, only if people are watching and it gets explained to them that way. Explain it a different way, and it's perfectly normal and natural. Which, really, it is.

I mean...shutting down the government as a blackmail tactic isn't quite normal and natural, and doing it for a goal which everyone agrees isn't going to be achieved is definitely not normal and natural. One could even argue that filibusters are not normal and natural, or at least the filibuster-everything plan that Republicans took up in January of 2009. And neutral analysis should absolutely point those things out. But the specific sequence of votes and the parliamentary situation, and especially this particular oddity? Nah.

As I said, though, I don't think it's actually going to matter at all. Oh, I do expect some Senators to use it as an excuse if they choose to vote for cloture. But it's an excuse, not a reason.