"nuclear option" is the senate radioactive?

[Reub]

hairy read has passed or is in the process of passing the "nuclear option" messing with longstanding tradition and giving the minority party the shaft, what will this mean? how will we have checks and balance's? will the dem's still think its a good idea when they are the minority?

I just heard someone on my favorite news channel, Fox News, say that the Republicans, if they win the Senate next year and hold the House, can now repeal Obamacare with a simple majority, instead of requiring a super-majority in the Senate. Of course, there's still that habitual fibber in the White House!

[Pointedstick]

I just heard someone on my favorite news channel, Fox News, say that the Republicans, if they win the Senate next year and hold the House, can now repeal Obamacare with a simple majority, instead of requiring a super-majority in the Senate. Of course, there's still that habitual fibber in the White House!

That someone was talking nonsense. What happened today only affects judicial nominations, which now have to pass by only a bare majority. They didn't do away with the filibuster entirely.

[dragoncar]

it sets a bad precedent, no mater how limited their first toe dip into this pool is..

Well the longstanding "tradition" and "precedent" was not to filibuster presidential nominees so....

[ns2]

With the ongoing Obamacare fiasco I would think the Democrats would back off and tread lightly knowing that this bill was passed without a single Republican vote and there is some potential for backlash.

I suspect they will wait until they can get an amnesty bill passed and then they'll be able to stick it completely to Republicans once and for all and forever, or at least as long as their congressional lifetimes last.

[dragoncar]

Well the longstanding "tradition" and "precedent" was not to filibuster presidential nominees so....

i could be wrong but up until the last couple presidents, hasn't there also been  long standing tradition to pick judges that were only, mildly controversial, slightly biased, or mostly qualified..

No idea... I'd love to see the stats on for/against

i am not sure either, but my impression is that the political gamesmanship of nominating a John Wayne Gacy, knowing he will get rejected and pave the way for Ted Bundys nomination to pass, is fairly recent , within the last couple/few presidents... somebody here may have a better grasp of the actual history... but it sure seems like radical (and sometimes unqualified) choices are more common now...

[Ad Orientem]

I just heard someone on my favorite news channel, Fox News, say that the Republicans, if they win the Senate next year and hold the House, can now repeal Obamacare with a simple majority, instead of requiring a super-majority in the Senate. Of course, there's still that habitual fibber in the White House!

That someone was talking nonsense. What happened today only affects judicial nominations, which now have to pass by only a bare majority. They didn't do away with the filibuster entirely.

The danger is that the Dems have established a precedent. For the first time in 200+ years the rules of the Senate have been changed by a bare majority on a party-line vote. The idea of requiring a super majority is no longer sacred. The Republicans can now change the rules at will if/when they gain the majority. And indeed they have already vowed that the Democrats will rue this action. At the very least I doubt they will allow the Democrats to filibuster a GOP president's nominees to the Supreme Court.

The legislative filibuster remains, but for how long? It can be changed at whim with no consent from the minority party.

In fairness the GOP without a doubt instigated this crisis, and they did so very deliberately. They attempted, while serving as the minority party, to unilaterally strip the lawfully elected President of the United States of his constitutional power to appoint judges on the equally outrageous pretext of unilaterally reducing the size of the US Court of Appeals for DC. But even in the face of such admittedly extreme provocation, this is something that is going to have huge consequences for a long time to come.

The Senate is now little more than a smaller version of the House of Representatives. And that is not a good thing.

Had I been the Democratic Majority Leader I would have called Mitch McConnell and politely told him that not one Republican nominated judge would be approved by the Senate barring a 60+ Republican majority unless they gave an up or down vote on Obama's nominees to the courts. Given the composition of the GOP caucus I am not sure that this would have moved them. But it would have put them on notice that they were courting full scale war.

[Benko]

The Republicans can now change the rules at will if/when they gain the majority.

They can but they won't. 

At the first threat of it, the dems will state that the republicans are being extreme, the media will run first page stories backing them up on it, and the republicans will cave.

Forget this, I want to see the next Republican president do what Obama has done in terms of going around congress in terms of laws he doesn't like. 

[RuralEngineer]

I've been saying it for years that this mess can't be fixed through our existing political process and every few months the idiots in D.C. do something stupid to prove me right.  I'll say it again, there's no undoing this.  The wreckage our "leaders" have made of our government can't be undone.  The answer is to burn out the rot and start over.

Seriously, can anyone put forth any scenario that's even remotely plausible where the "nuclear option" is undone?  It would take a majority party to do it.  And if you're the majority party then having it is in your favor.  Maybe, maybe in a lame duck session, but that's about it.  However, historical precedent is that stupid shit like this is carved in stone.

[RuralEngineer]

Forget this, I want to see the next Republican president do what Obama has done in terms of going around congress in terms of laws he doesn't like.

How about fewer Presidents violating our Constitution and further screwing all of us over, mmkay?  In what way would Obama 2.0 be helpful?  For all you know that kinds of end runs your GOP president would be doing might be to put even more domestic surveillance in place.  They did grace us with the Patriot act after all.

[Pointedstick]

I've been saying it for years that this mess can't be fixed through our existing political process and every few months the idiots in D.C. do something stupid to prove me right.  I'll say it again, there's no undoing this.  The wreckage our "leaders" have made of our government can't be undone.  The answer is to burn out the rot and start over.

The question, of course, is how? Barring another civil war, of course, which I see as not much of an option due to the geographic distribution of the potential factions.

[Benko]

How about fewer Presidents violating our Constitution and further screwing all of us over, mmkay?  In what way would Obama 2.0 be helpful?  For all you know that kinds of end runs your GOP president would be doing might be to put even more domestic surveillance in place.  They did grace us with the Patriot act after all.

"How about fewer Presidents violating our Constitution and further screwing all of us over, mmkay? "
That would be wonderful, however given the party of Alinsky, and the media helpers, that ain't going to happen. 

Right now the dems are MUCH more driven to impose their view of the world on the US, then are the republicans and the republicans always or nearly always cave. Thus the country keeps drifting ever leftward.  It may be that this is our unalterable fate and there is nothing that can be done about it. On the other hand, if there was a president as determined to reverse what is going on, as Obama has been to transform our society, It would be worth many things (in my personal view).  Is there anyone who would actually do that I dunno. 

NB: I really dislike the idea of more domestic surveillance and would hope that would not be part of the package.  Perhaps I'm being naive.  But  3 years more Obama + 4-8 of Clinton would leave the country in a bad shape.

[RuralEngineer]

I've been saying it for years that this mess can't be fixed through our existing political process and every few months the idiots in D.C. do something stupid to prove me right.  I'll say it again, there's no undoing this.  The wreckage our "leaders" have made of our government can't be undone.  The answer is to burn out the rot and start over.

The question, of course, is how? Barring another civil war, of course, which I see as not much of an option due to the geographic distribution of the potential factions.

I don't see this as being as much of an issue as you do.  If you had some crazy fundamentalist waging such a civil war, then yes it's a problem because they're probably going to want to pattern themselves on Syria and wage a war over territory where you try and exterminate the opposition.  I guess it all depends on who's leading the effort to reboot our government and what their agenda is. 

I think there's a case to be made that if you could remove enough of the existing power structure to cause a collapse that you could then extend the olive branch and offer the choice of dissolution or an attempt to start over and clean out all the crap that is jamming up the works while still maintaining the integrity of the nation.  We might lose some territory, but being large has a lot of benefits and going it alone would be difficult.  I think they'd see that eventually, and if not, more power to them.  The goal is to remove the status quo as an option and then try to influence the result as much as possible in the hope that it's better than what we had.  In a way, this is similar to what the founders did.  There was every possibility that the results of the revolution could have been worse than what they had under British rule.  They argued until they reached a compromise that seemed like a sufficient improvement.

[Ad Orientem]

Forget this, I want to see the next Republican president do what Obama has done in terms of going around congress in terms of laws he doesn't like.

How about fewer Presidents violating our Constitution and further screwing all of us over, mmkay?  In what way would Obama 2.0 be helpful?  For all you know that kinds of end runs your GOP president would be doing might be to put even more domestic surveillance in place.  They did grace us with the Patriot act after all.

I think you mean Bush 3.0. Obama is just using and expanding on Bush's playbook. All that illegal surveillance, extraordinary renditions, suspension of Habeus Corpus, use of torture, signing statements declaring his right to ignore the law, Patriot Act and so on began on G.W Bush.

What we have today is Bush's 4th term.

[Benko]

Given the state of our economy, the mess being made of healthcare, and the mess being made of our relations with our overseas allies, is that really your #1 or even 2 priority when deciding who you want for the next president?