The GOP is using a filibuster on almost literally every vote in the Senate now. CNN confirmed Obama's SOTU claim that from 1949 to 1970, there were only 30 instances of using the filibuster -- and never more than 7 in any two-year session, while in 2009 alone, there were 39 by Republicans. This causes massive paralysis in our political process, where a 59-vote majority is not enough to get things done, leading to the public's cynicism with "the way Washington in broken"...hey, why would they do that?
Easy answer: their incentive is intrinsic to their ideology, which states that government is dysfunctional and cannot help people. If they can help perpetuate that belief by, for instance, preventing 70 qualified people from being appointed to necessary government posts by having an up-or-down vote in the Senate, they will. If they can turn a serious debate over substantive policy into an anti-intellectual joke, they will. By actually making government broken, they fulfill their own prophecies and attempt to cut off the possibility of hopefulness. By being the party of Beavis and Butthead, Republicans make government the butt of a joke, which ironically turns into their favor by running on a platform that says, "Elect me to be a joker. How can you hope for change?" That way, politicians who promise actual results and good things for the country are never believed (or elected). By exploiting cynicism, they win a political battle, but lose the larger war.
The burden of being the grown-up party is believing -- and actually behaving as if -- government must be force for good in its citizen's lives. That's why liberals conceded so much on health insurance reform: it is much more important to get something done to fix the broken system than to allow it to continue as it is over disagreements. And it's both the curse and the blessing of being right about policy matters that you become responsible for getting them enacted anyway when your opposition obstructs you for no good reason. I just hope our Senate doesn't become a Polish joke.
