When the tables were turned a few years back, the Senate Democrats were looking to use the fact that the Republicans didn't have 60 votes to block many highly-qualified jurist appointments, purely on the grounds that the Republican President (George W. Bush) would nominate jurists whom would decide court cases purely on political ideology; in fact, the former President wanted to appoint judges whom understood, as unelected, their mandate did not usurp the rights and responsibilities of the other elected branches to make policy.
The Senate Democrats wanted to unconventionally use the power of the filibuster to prevent confirmation votes on cherrypicked judicial nominees, especially high-profile appointments (i.e., courts of appeal and the Supreme Court). Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist threatened to change Senate rules to explicitly rule out this abuse of the filibuster power. Hence, the McCain-led bipartisan Gang of 14 arose as a mediating force which enabled some pent-up appointments to get to the floor while maintaining the rights of the minority to filibuster.
Now fast-forward to the present. We have an unprecedented $3.5T fiscal year 2010 budget submitted by President Obama. Majority Leader Harry Reid unconventionally used the budget reconciliation process, which carries with a simple majority, to push for the largest budget in US history on the American taxpayer. The budget reconciliation process has traditionally been used for non-policy, non-substantive bills; since the budget implicitly involves certain new policy decisions, in particular, funding of Obama's stealth program towards national health insurance, this constitutes an even greater abuse of power than the Democrats' previous low of abusing the filibuster as a routine weapon against any high-profile conservative jurist, no matter how well-qualified: it de facto strips the minority of any significant role in substantive legislation, a tactic which if allowed to continue might see the procedure applied to specific bills on matters like union card check, climate change/"cap and trade", entitlement reform, and health care insurance. That effectively strips the minority party of its right to filibuster and the right of the American people to have legitimate bipartisan legislation on major policy issues. If anything, this even broadens the partisan divide on Capitol Hill, making a mockery of Obamaian ideals of nonpartisanship as a way of changing Washington. What makes it especially egregious is that only 3 years ago, the shoe was on the other foot, and the Republicans never tried to pull these kinds of maneuvers to effectively strip the Democrats of the right to filibuster; it simply considered restricting the abuse of the filibuster in application to judicial nominatons, the practice of which was not used in the history of the country to prevent floor votes for nominees earning majority support--the Constitution does not require super-majority confirmation of nominees.
Obama should be very leery of any such gifts by the likes of Reid and Pelosi. Typically we see minority party gains in mid-term elections, and his cronies' perversion of the legislative process into a numbers game of purely partisan measures makes the choice of American voters in the next election a clear choice with a properly chastened, reform-minded Republican Party, especially if the economy is still struggling. Obama cannot count on overwhelming majority in both the House and Senate over the remaining 2 or 6 years of his Presidency; it's in his own best interests to maintain a de facto balance of power, not just to maintain majority support in both houses, but as a check on unrestrained liberalism.
Obama would be well-served to consider the substantive inputs of Republicans like Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan and former Speaker Newt Gingrich, whom have articulated well-defined proposals on public policy issues from a conservative standpoint.
