Last night in comments I was unduly cynical about the Texas SB5 filibuster. It wasn't that I didn't think she (and others) were sincere in opposing the bill, but I really didn't think it would ever work, and expressed disappointment in fellow liberals who were themselves shocked by GOP/conservative willingness to flout the obvious intent of the rules by ruling her filibuster out of order.
My basic point was that liberals always seem to be caught off guard by conservative willingness to ignore all obstacles on their path to victory. This has frequently been a tremendous disadvantage, our implicit faith that the rules will be adhered to. In the 2000 Election, the "nuclear option" fracas of 2005, Wisconsin in 2010 and many other places we rely on the rules to protect us and have no back up plan when they don't.
I'm very glad to be wrong about the outcome last night (though no one likes being wrong or admitting it).
Of course Republicans did as I expected, and appeared to be fulling willing to break whatever rules were needed to pass their bill. What made the difference was the crowd in the gallery, who, emulating a very frequently used right wing tactic, shouted them down with sheer cheering to run out the clock.
Three things made this work:
1) Elected Democrats willing to use the system to the utmost. Not just the filibuster, but the various procedural tools employed once Wendy was shut down. You can't get anywhere if you don't have this, but it would never have been enough without the next two.
2) A crowd of activists willing to intervene strategically. I really hope we hear that the crowd was well organized in being smart about when they started a major interruption, because it's remarkable that they weren't thrown out by the majority in advance. I'm afraid this won't work again, any future last minute ALEC bill of right wing extremism will see the gallery pre-cleared or cleared at the slightest provocation. These people broke the rules, and that's been too rare from liberals. Spectators are not supposed to filibuster, and too often liberals uphold the propriety of rule-obeying over the need to fully resist what is being done.
3) Simple GOP incompetence. They didn't clear the gallery when they had the chance. They didn't bust Wendy's filibuster early enough. They were obviously willing to break her filibuster on any specious pretext of non-germane speaking subjects, so why wait to do it? They could have done this at dinner time when most people were eating or driving home, and by the time they turned on the TV and computers, it would have been done. Luckily, our enemies are not always as supremely competent as they are vicious. I particularly failed to take this into account in my estimate of how this was going to turn out.
So, sorry again. Glad it worked. Still feel like there are lessons to learn here in terms of how and why this worked, if there is to be hope of repeating this under any similar circumstance. The good guys got a little bit lucky, but they were doing the right things so that they could capitalize on that luck. I hope the energy of this translates into real gains in Texas (and elsewhere) so that these "victories" are not merely defensive, but start to roll back the vast right wing agenda.