FILIBUSTER UPDATE: Mickey Kaus thinks that the make-’em-talk proposal for filibuster reform won’t work:

It might make sense, as Instapundit and others suggest, to require that Senate filibusterers really filibuster, with allnighters, cots and potlikker recipes, etc.. But it is a non-solution to the problem confronting the Senate today–which is whether a minority should be able to block a Supreme Court nominee supported by a majority (but less than 60%). It’s true, as Instapundit notes, that the “real filibuster” requirement would

ensure that the filibuster-nuke is dropped only when the stakes are high enough that the minority is willing to pay a price.

But a Supreme Court nomination is just such a case. Democrats would clearly be willing to undertake a “real” filibuster to block Janice Rogers Brown, for example. So we’re still presented with the question: Should they be able to do that? Allow “real” filibusters and the Democrats win (as I think they should).

I don’t think that’s so obvious. Allowing “real” filibusters means that you’ll get a vote someday — not even Ted Kennedy and John Kerry can talk forever; it just seems that way while they’re talking. But the more important point is that it would require the Democrats to engage, not simply obstruct, Supreme Court nominations, and to do so at length.

Of course, what Bush really ought to do is nominate a quirky libertarian judge like Alex Kozinski, thus confusing the Democrats and completely undermining their “the Theocrats are coming!”^TM campaign. Unfortunately, Kozinski — though to my mind perhaps the best Court of Appeals judge of an age to be eligible for the Supreme Court — is almost certainly too politically incorrect (read: libertarian) to fly with the Republican powers-that-be, a fact that gives the Democrats’ sloganeering some shreds of credibility.

Which means that if the Democrats were smart, instead of just grimly obstructionist, they’d be out there floating names of judges like Kozinski as examples of candidates that they wouldn’t filibuster (Eugene Volokh would be a good one, too!). This would put Bush in a tough spot, as he’d have to explain why his candidates were better than Kozinski or Volokh, which would be hard, as there aren’t many candidates better than Kozinski or Volokh, or give more credit to the whole “Theocrats” thing.

Luckily for Bush, the Democrats aren’t that smart.

UPDATE: I think it’s worth stressing that my earlier invocation of this idea was based on this post by TigerHawk, and I don’t think people should underestimate the impact of C-SPAN, etc., on these kinds of things. As TigerHawk notes, the prospect of seeing nonstop bloviation by Democratic Senators broadcast (and archived for use in future campaign ads) is sure to give the Democrats pause. At least it should, if they’re smart.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Pierre Trepagnier emails:

I suggest the real difference with abandoning the current “two-track” rules and going back to a classical filibuster is that the true filibuster brings the Senate to a halt while it occurs; a two-track filibuster is not really one at all, because the usual Senate business goes on in parallel. Actually bringing the Senate to a halt is, as Newt Gingrich found out in a different case, a high-risk gamble. The country will get fed up in a hurry, but it is not obvious in advance who will get the blame. It could be the Republicans.

Possibly, and certainly the media would spin it that way. Then again, who’s getting blamed now?