Brian Beutler has an interesting post on "how much did the Democrats suck" last week. I think he is right in his broad point that asking people to play nice or do the right thing is not a very effective technique for getting votes. Someone willing to throw kids under the bus to help out their corporate overlords is probably not too interested in the warm and fuzzy feeling of keeping kids healthy.

But, I disagree with this point:
It's a real disappointment, I think, that the Republicans in both chambers have either a better understanding of parliamentary procedure or a greater willingness to use it to their advantage. I'm not a student of modern Republican political history, but I'd speculate that this comes from their 40 year absence from Congress in the mid-to-late 20th century, and the revolutionary spirit with which they regained power in the 1990s--basically, that, as an energized movement, they come to the Hill everyday intending to win.

Republicans do not have a superior ability to utilize parliamentary procedure to their benefit because Democrats have not studied their rules closely enough or ignored them because they were too comfortably on top. Republicans have a superior ability to utilize procedure because in the media narrative that impacts whether they get reelected every few years the press gives them a free pass, while the Broder's of the world throw a big and public hissy fit everytime the Democrats even mentioned the word filibuster or ammendment.