The Senate as social club

In today's New York Times, David Brooks laments the effect that pushing health care reform through by reconciliation will have on the comity of the Senate.

Once partisan reconciliation is used for this bill, it will be used for everything, now and forever. The Senate will be the House. The remnants of person-to-person relationships, with their sympathy and sentiment, will be snuffed out. We will live amid the relationships of group versus group, party versus party, inhumanity versus inhumanity.

It would be nice if the Senate were a friendly club where Jim DeMint and Barbara Boxer could socialize over brandy and cigars. But the purpose of a legislature is to legislate. The Republicans' scorched-earth tactics have made it impossible for the Senate to carry out this essential function. Reconciliation is a solution to a problem, not the problem itself.