Do I Contradict Myself?

Yglesias mentioned that

I was discussing the tit-for-tat cycle of Senate procedural abuse with someone over the weekend who compared it to a late Roman Republic dynamic.

What tit-for-tat cycle might that be?  The one where the Roman senate assassinated the Grachii brothers when they tried to reduce or remove the inequalities of wealth and property ownership followed from decades of successful imperialism?  Or the resultant rise of private armies more loyal to their generals than to Rome, like Marius' Mules and the consequent internecine civil war, Marius then Sulla a pause and then the divine Mr. J, that finally came to end when Octavian defeated Marc Anthony?   How is that tit for tat? And in any event he

like Neil Sinhababu, I think the proper analogy is to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth which institutionalized a version of what DeMint is doing, the liberum veto that let any member of the assembly of nobles block action.

 See what he did there?

Still wearing his serious historians hat, he claims that  he is "not generally a fan of citing the founders as authorities[.]" Because? He lost the notes from that class? He goes on to claim that

since some people are under the misimpression that Senate dysfunction is part of some genius founding scheme, it’s worth observing that according to Hamilton; Madison, a Polish-style national legislation is precisely what they’re trying to avoid:

 If more direct examples were wanting, Poland, as a government over local sovereigns, might not improperly be taken notice of. Nor could any proof more striking be given of the calamities flowing from such institutions. Equally unfit for self-government and self-defense, it has long been at the mercy of its powerful neighbors; who have lately had the mercy to disburden it of one third of its people and territories.

 Indeed, Poland would be further partitioned twice more and go out of existence before 1800. That said, I’ve long harbored doubts about the Hamilton/Madison theory of historical causation here. But there’s some evidence for the thesis, and one way or another it’s perfectly clear that this was the outcome the founders didn’t want.

 So when he was praising the Republicans for abusing procedures to stop any legislation with which they disagreed he really meant to warn against abusing procedures to stop any legislation. Walt Whitman he ain't, although he is large enough to contradict himself.