Cornyn on filibuster: What goes around, comes around

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) had a message on Wednesday for Democrats who complained about Senate Republicans' use of the filibuster: what goes around, comes around. 

Cornyn spoke a day after Democrats failed to break a Republican filibuster of Craig Becker, a labor attorney President Barack Obama nominated to serve on the National Labor Relations Board. 

He tweeted in response to a post from ABC News' Rick Klein:

Klein: intriguing Scot Lehigh question: will Scott Brown support ending use of filibusters? (other than on hcare) http://bit.ly/dpzAjZ

Cornyn: RT @thenote: re: filibuster. Bipartisan support for protecting minority rights. What goes around comes around.

Mudslinging between Democrats and Republicans on the Senate procedure has ramped up ever since Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) became the 41st GOP senator, thus blocking the Democrats' healthcare reform legislation.

Democrats have accused Republicans of using the procedure an unprecedented amount of times during this Congress, blocking noncontroversial pieces of legislation as well as using holds to block pending Obama administration nominees for reasons unrelated to the nominees themselves.

Republicans say that with such a narrow minority in Congress, the filibuster is one of the only ways to block Obama's agenda. GOP senators also say that Democrats practiced similar tactics during the Bush administration to block his judicial nominees, but Democrats say they did so for reasons related to the judges, not for unrelated purposes.

On Tuesday, Republicans successfully blocked the nomination of Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board by using a hold, which is similar to a filibuster in that it requires that 60 senators vote to break it. 

Cross-posted to the Twitter Room