I can still recall arguing with a pack of leftists one night on the Facebook in the past few years. I got my procedural gimmicks mixed up and mistakenly used the term "nuclear option" instead of "reconciliation" to describe the procedural maneuver that the democrat party abused to foist Obamacare into law on a mere 51 votes in the Senate in 2010...
You'd have thunk that I had just accused Bill Clinton of being a philanderer and a liar or something! "We didn't use the nuclear option!," screamed the leftists, as if mixing up the names of the two 51-vote procedural gimmicks was even worth more than a passing mention by them. But indeed, it allowed the leftists to ignore the substance of my argument (that Obamacare passed in highly slimeball fashion) and instead focus all attention on my reference to the wrong gimmick name...
Now democrat party and its Leftist Base Unanimously Cheer Use of the Nuclear Option
So how ironic (more like predictable) it is this week, a year or two later, that the democrat party (at Obama's behest and on a straight party-line vote) used that same dreaded "nuclear option" to pass what effectively amounted to an historic Senate rules change (normally requiring 67 votes) with only 51 votes. The rule change itself (technically called "establishing a precedent" rather than a strict change of the rules) permits the confirmation of presidential judicial and executive branch nominees by 51 votes instead of 60 (i.e., it now only takes 51 votes to end a filibuster on a nominee).
Never mind that ending filibusters on presidential nominations in the Senate (as best as I can tell) has required at least 60 votes for the past 225 years. Never mind that 60 votes served as a crucial check on the power of presidents of both parties to nominate radical ideologue judges (just wait until Obama gets going on that one now).
Never mind, either, that these same leftists would be out marching in the streets if the right-winger gop-ers ever attempted such a sleazy, "un-American," "naked power grab" (as VP Joe Biden and the above-pictured Senate majority leader Harry Reid referred to the nuclear option in 2005 when there was an "R" next to the president's name -- both Biden and Reid, like Obama, take an opposite position now than they did then). Hypocrites. As usual. But the ends do always justify the means, right leftists?
Meanwhile gop-ers Look as Hapless, Clueless and Powerless As Ever In Their Response
Meantime it appears the gop-ers didn't put up much of a fight on this one, almost content to let the democrat party have its way this time. The gop-ers' standard talking point has been to take smug satisfaction in the fact that the democrat party's move will allow gop-ers to more easily confirm their own presidential nominees, with 51 votes ending any filibuster, when the gop-ers win the presidency. But two huge problems with that line of thinking...
First, how incredibly presumptuous of the gop-ers to think that they will win the presidency anytime soon. It could happen, but it also may be awhile. For example, odds are (although certainly not assured) that we're looking at up to 8 years of Hillary Clinton starting 2017. Good grief, that's a whole lotta years of leftist presidents stacking the federal judiciary with leftist ideologues. Scary proposition. Which is now reality.
Second, and maybe just as significantly, these gop-ers don't even seem to be considering this fact: If gop-ers win a presidential election at a point in time when the democrat party still holds a majority in the Senate, then the democrat party in the lame-duck period following the election could simply use the nuclear option again and, with 51 votes, change the rule back to the way it was (60 votes necessary to end a filibuster on a presidential nominee).
Yes, that would mean the democrat party having the unmitigated gall to use an extraordinary, hyper-partisan tactic, the nuclear option, (1) not only to change an historic rule when it benefits them politically (as they do now), but also (2) to simply change the rule back when the original rule benefits them politically. The stuff of banana republics, you might ask? Something that would never happen in this country? Well, I've got only one thing to say to that: Look at the people you're dealing with here.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/senate-poised-to-limit-filibusters-in-party-line-vote-that-would-alter-centuries-of-precedent/2013/11/21/d065cfe8-52b6-11e3-9fe0-fd2ca728e67c_print.html
http://stream.wsj.com/story/campaign-2012-continuous-coverage/SS-2-9156/SS-2-389152/
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