On last Thursday, the House of Representatives passed a bill that one might have expected to be a stunning triumph for Democrats: A measure requiring the start of American troop withdrawal from Iraq within 120 days.

But after the bill’s passage was announced in the House around 6:15 p.m., there was only a smattering of limp applause from the left side of the chamber. In a victory-lap press conference after the vote, the mood was similarly grim.

“Who told you that?” Speaker Nancy Pelosi snapped, after a reporter asked whether the House vote was timed to put pressure on moderate Senate Republicans. “Thank you for the compliment on the coordination of the Democratic Party,” she added sarcastically.

Why the long faces after a seminal anti-war vote that many formerly hesitant Democratic moderates joined? Despite the laudable unity the House Democrats have now achieved, they’re right to be depressed. The vote was timed to jibe with Senate efforts to pass legislation limiting the Iraq war, and that chamber — not the House — ought to be taking the anti-war lead. After all, seven Senate Republicans have already gone with Democrats on legislation to limit deployments — more total defectors than in the House.

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But despite its Democratic majority, and the wishes of nearly 15 percent of its Republicans, the Senate can’t pass a thing. It’s being held hostage by the Republican leadership, which threatens to filibuster every controversial measure and forces Democrats to assemble 60 votes in favor, not 51.

The rationale invoked for such promiscuous use of filibuster threats is minority rights: Republicans may be out of power, but to prevent the government from descending into a sheer tyranny of the majority, they are almost honor-bound to use their filibuster power.

In the mid-’90s, though, Republicans had a different phrase for this behavior: obstructionism. May I suggest a term even more felicitous to our times: tool of Bush.

That’s what Senate Republicans become when they overuse filibuster threats to block Iraq votes.

It would be one thing if the president were an anti-war Democrat, and Senate Republicans were the only line of defense against creeping liberal hegemony. But we have Bush, and he’s the one constitutionally responsible for holding up his hand against legislation he disagrees with.

When he vetoes a bill, it takes two-thirds to override it anyway, so all the votes that die thanks to the 60-vote requirement to override a filibuster would crumble under his veto. When Senate Republicans block bills that would pass but be vetoed, they are merely acting in Bush’s stead, taking what should be his responsibility onto themselves. Doing so wastes the Senate’s time by provoking Democrats to bring up the same measures again and again.

After all, I don’t presume — as some Democrats do — that many more Republicans would be voting with Democrats on Iraq if they weren’t intimidated. Let everybody vote how they want.

But those seven Republicans who have already voted with Democrats should not be effectively disenfranchised. Their courageous votes ought to allow these Iraq measures to carry within the Senate, even if the bills die later in the constitutional process.

That doesn’t mean the filibuster should never be used. But if Senate Republican leaders really think any one of these Iraq measures will destroy the country, let them filibuster it — the real, ballsy way.

What happened to the days when filibustering something took serious commitment, like reading from the telephone book long into the night? In truth, those days never really existed. Parliamentary tactics almost always allow for a filibuster to be sustained without bringing the cots onto the Senate floor.

But I’d support defanging those parliamentary tactics and making the filibuster truly inconvenient, so it’s only worth using in the direst of circumstances. Imagine Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell having to draw up an all-night speaking schedule for every single Iraq measure he wants to filibuster: Trent Lott 2 to 4 a.m., Sam Brownback 4 to 6 a.m.

Imagine more moderate Republicans like Dick Lugar and John Warner standing in the chamber, struggling to stay awake, and reading from the stock exchange — or the list of numbers called by the D.C. Madam — or a roster of soldiers killed in Baghdad. They might just discover that holding the Senate hostage on behalf of Bush isn’t so noble after all.

Eve Fairbanks is a assistant editor of The New Republic.