Nick Gillespie & Meredith Bragg
Reason Magazine
11/21/2013
What a difference eight years and a Senate majority makes. Back in 2005, Senate Democrats (including Barack Obama) were in the minority – and dead-set against a Republican plan to allow judicial nominations to proceed to an up-or-down vote based on a simple majority. The so-called nuclear option, warned Obama and others, would have the Founders spinning in their graves and usher in a tyranny of the majority in the world’s greatest deliberative body.
But now, faced with a truculent Republican Senate minority, the Democrats done just that, effectively overturning 200 years of precedent. For more on what it all means, read http://reason.com/blog/2013/11/21/senate-democrats-go-nuclear-vote-down-pa
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Related: FLASHBACK: Obama Says ‘Nuclear Option Not What Founders Had In Mind, Will Poison Washington’
Today Majority Leader Reid pushed the Senate to eliminate filibusters on judicial and cabinet-level appointments. Reid offered for a vote the rule of the chair which would have preserved the right to filibuster these nominees. The Senate voted it down in a 48-52 vote, thus implementing the so-called “nuclear option.” All Democratic senators voted “nay” on maintaining the rules, with the exception of Senators Pryor (Ark.), Manchin (W.V.), and Levin (Mich.)…
…It’s worth nothing that Senator Reid has a substantial record of “unprecedented” obstruction of his own. Most notably the Senate failed to pass a budget during four years of his leadership…
Democrats Reneged on July Deal to ‘Save’ Filibuster
…The sudden end of the filibuster means that Republicans have no incentive whatsoever to negotiate with Democrats in the future. There is simply no way to trust that Democrats will keep their word. Obama and the Democrats may relish their temporary victory, and bask in the applause of a left-wing base desperate for signs of strength in the midst of the Obamacare debacle. But they have set the stage for major political war.
Those Republicans foolish enough to try to work with Democrats will now be tarnished as sell-outs–and with good reason…
Power Grab: Senate Democrats Cast Aside 225 Years of U.S. History by Invoking the “Nuclear Option”
Senate Democrats have cast aside 225 years of American History, choosing to invoke the “Nuclear Option” whereby they now can ram through Judicial Nominations (other than Supreme Court) with a simple majority vote, rather than needing cloture – 60 votes – to bring the nominations up for a vote of the full Senate. The rule they tossed out with the garbage today reverses more than two centuries of precedent in how the U.S. Senate conducts its business…
Harry Reid’s ‘nuclear option,’ then and now
…Harry Reid then: “Some in this chamber want to throw out 214 years of Senate history in the quest for absolute power … They think they’re wiser than our founding fathers. I doubt that that’s true.” (floor speech, May 18, 2005)
Harry Reid now: “This is not about Democrats versus Republicans. This is about making Washington work – regardless of who’s in the White House or who controls the Senate. To remain relevant and effective as an institution, the Senate must evolve to meet the challenges of a modern era.”
Harry Reid, later: The nuclear option, “simply put, would be the end of the United States Senate.” (from the book The Good Fight: Hard Lessons from Searchlight to Washington, 2008)
Harry Reid now: “It’s time to change the Senate before this institution becomes obsolete.”…
Reid in 2005 On GOP Attempts To Change The Filibuster “Very Un-America”
Senator Biden: Nuclear Option Vote The “Single Most Significant … In My 32 Years In The Senate”
Harry Reid goes nuclear: get ready for “Court Packing Scheme II.” Updated
…Reid, for all his faults, is not a stupid man. Or, at least, he’s a skilled politician who can see which way the electoral winds are blowing. He remembers 2010, when anger over the passage of Obamacare cost the Democrats the House and almost lost them the Senate.
But now people are even angrier, now that Obamacare has kicked in. And it’s only going to get worse for the Democrats, as the web site doesn’t get fixed, the “access shock” kicks in, rates go up even further, and millions who thought their employer-based coverage was safe find out otherwise starting in fall, 2014, just before the elections… See where this is going?
Harry Reid knows the Senate is lost. He’s read the entrails for his party’s fortunes and seen in the not too distant future a Republican House, Senate, and (quite possibly) White House. With the loss of legislative power this entails, Reid has laid the groundwork to do the one thing he can do to protect the progressive agenda in 2017 and beyond: pack the courts with progressive judges.
Court packing was the scheme through which FDR hoped to load up a conservative Supreme Court that had been blocking key New Deal measures with liberal justices who would swing decisions his way. While the plan per se failed, it had the intended effect: the Court was intimidated and, through retirement and changed minds, started to vote FDR’s way.
Reid has the same thing in mind…
Read the whole thing.
Remember, this was just two weeks ago: At a fundraiser, Obama makes a chilling admission about the courts
Mark Levin: This nation is in grave jeopardy like nothing I’ve ever seen before…
Mark Levin opened his show with another epic monologue explaining that what’s really going on with this so-called nuclear option is that Obama wants to run this nation out of the Oval Office…
Harry Reid, Democrats vote to give themselves more power
The left’s end game is nearly complete: use law and procedure to fundamentally transform law and procedure — that is, use the intentional bastardization of our institutions and laws to deconstruct them — thus fundamentally transforming the United States, and with it, fundamentally transforming the role of the citizen and sovereign to one of subject ruled over by sovereigns…
…for all the one-sidedness of Levin’s speech, it was still fundamentally sound, grounded in principles once shared by leaders who understood the danger of unchecked majoritarianism. In 2005, then-Sen. Obama declared that “majoritarian absolute power on either side” was “not what the founders intended.” Those sentiments, like most Obama pronouncements, were false. Carl Levin, by contrast, is true to his word.
Harry Reid pulls the trigger on “nuclear option”, Senate strikes down 225 years of precedent
The Senate has voted 52-48 to invoke the so-called ‘nuclear option’. The decision strikes down a long-standing filibuster rule that applies to most presidential nominations. As the Washington Post reported, a passage alters nearly 225 years of precedent. The change allows for the confirmation of executive branch nominees and most federal judiciary selections with a simple majority.
“What you are seeing happening in Washington, D.C. today is the undermining of our republic. It is the weakening of our republic. It was wrong when the Republicans tried to do it, it is wrong today,” Glenn said on radio this morning. “Harry Reid has just proposed that they stop the filibuster. Now you need 60 votes to stop a filibuster. He says that’s too high of a bar. He have wants it to be 50 votes. Then what good is a filibuster?”…
…“Is there anybody that actually believes in something?”…
Andrew McCarthy: Senate Now Under ‘Law of the Jungle’
…”Basically Thomas Jefferson wrote the rules that the Senate operates under. They’ve been changed and tweaked over time, but you know we’re dealing with rules that have been in effect for a very, very long time.”And if you’ve now struck a procedure where it only takes 51 votes to change the rule in effect you really have no rule because every time they don’t like them, they’ll just change them.”…
Update: FoxNews.com’s homepage at 5:30 EST this evening:
