GOP Traffic-Jam Ploy Is Snarling Senate

Senate Democrats are starting to turn on each other like angry drivers stuck in rush-hour traffic thanks to Republican obstructionism, writes EJ Dionne. Republican senators are eating every word they once said against filibusterism and are stalling even legislation that they support in a Machiavellian effort to keep the Democrats from reaching the off-ramp, Dionne writes in the Washington Post.

"The extra-constitutional filibuster is being used by the minority, with extraordinary success, to make the majority look foolish, ineffectual, and incompetent," Dionne writes. Moderate Democrats trying to push through their own agendas on the back of Republican stalling tactics on health care and other issues should realize they are making themselves "complicit in this humiliation," Dionne concludes. (More filibuster stories.)