I don’t think Republicans would sustain a talking filibuster on everything – just anything of importance. Do you really think that Republicans would abandon a talking filibuster of voting rights legislation for the sake of passing some post office renamings? A talking filibuster also effectively shifts control over the Senate calendar to the minority, since they can decide when to bring the Senate to a halt and when (and under what conditions) they will relent.
This is my other issue with proponents of “bringing back” the talking filibuster – they always propose bringing it back in an idealized form that has never existed. Chuck Schumer can eliminate the “two track system” and force Republicans to talk out filibusters any time he wants to – it’s not a Senate rule. But limiting Senators to only speak once during a filibuster or requiring that all comments be germane to the bill would require changes to Senate rules, which needs a two-thirds vote.
As I understand it, this part isn’t quite true, though. As I understand it, under the current Organizing Resolution, it requires a 2/3 vote to change the rules mid-session. But changing the Organizing Resolution itself to allow other rules changes only takes a 50%+1 vote. Senate tradition strongly mitigates against doing that, but it’s not unprecedented.
Happy to be corrected, but I don’t believe the organizing resolution can be used to change the standing rules of the Senate. The organizing resolution is passed at the start of each session to determine who sits on what committees, how staff budgets are allocated, etc. It also sets some procedural matters – e.g. they had to include special provisions in the latest organizing resolution for how a bill will be reported out of committee if there’s a tie. But it doesn’t change the standing rules and can’t create a process that would circumvent the 2/3 requirement to amend the rules.
Technically you can change the standing rules through a simple majority vote, but any resolution changing the rules is subject to filibuster with a 2/3 requirement to invoke cloture (instead of the normal 3/5). The Senate rules would certainly have to be changed to do things like restrict when Senators may be recognized to speak or require their comments be germane – the rules already address these points and they’re fundamental aspects of a Senator’s rights.
You’re right, it’s the Standing Rules, not the Organizing Resolution.
The thing is, though, the Standing Rules are set by the Senate itself. My understanding is that there’s no real way for a voting body to actually bind itself. Whatever voting procedures it chooses to put in place, it can just change with a 50% + 1 vote. If the current rules say it requires a 2/3 vote to change the rules, the Senate can just change that underlying rule. If there’s a rule that it requires a 2/3 vote to change the rules to change the rules, the Senate can change that rule, and so on. The Constitution specifies that the Senate sets its own rules of procedures.
There’s a longstanding norm in the U.S. Senate not to do that, but it’s technically possible.
This reminds me of a children’s board game I read about some years ago. It was designed with the idea to be educational about how governments (the Unites States in particular) work. The gist of the game was that it had elaborate rules, but those rules could be changed as the game is played. There were elaborate rules about how the rules could be changed. The whole strategy of the game was all about changing the rules to one’s own advantage and all the rules-about-rules the players had to go through to do it.
Ha, yeah, in these “rules debates” it’s all too easy to disappear up your own ass (being fully guilty of that on occasion myself). This is particularly true in the Senate, where the standing rules are only part of the process, with precedents, customs and norms being at least as important. Ultimately “the rules” derive their authority from Senators being willing to go along with them and what “the rules” are and how they are applied can be substantively changed in a number of ways.