Make it easier for a President to get his nominees confirmed than it used to be. Stifle the opposition. Show ’em who’s boss.
It seemed like such a great idea when Democrats “knew” they were going to keep winning presidential elections.
And what if they were wrong? Ridiculous!! How could those myopic Republicans ever win over a coalition of various minorities and women? It didn’t compute, so there was nothing to worry about.
Except….
Excerpted from Manu Raju and Ted Barrett’s article at cnn.com:
Senate Democrats are eager to make Donald Trump pay a political price for nominating staunch conservatives to fill out his Cabinet, hoping to exact revenge for the GOP’s stubborn opposition to President Barack Obama’s nominees.
But there is little they can do about it — and some top Democrats are now coming to regret it.
That’s because Senate Democrats muscled through an unprecedented rules change in 2013 to weaken the power of the minority party to filibuster Cabinet-level appointees and most judicial nominees, now setting the threshold at 51 votes — rather than 60 — to overcome tactics aimed at derailing nominations.
With the Senate GOP poised to hold 52 seats next Congress, some Democrats now say they should have thought twice before making the rules change — known on Capitol Hill as the “nuclear option.”
“I do regret that,” said Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, a Democrat who voted for the rules change three years ago. “I frankly think many of us will regret that in this Congress because it would have been a terrific speed bump, potential emergency break, to have in our system to slow down nominees.”
With their power weakened, Democrats are weighing how to make life difficult for the Senate GOP.
Senate Democrats plan to make speeches and mount objections to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s efforts to quickly schedule votes to confirm much of Trump’s Cabinet by the time he is inaugurated in January. Under the rules, they could delay votes from taking place for a few days at a time, temporarily slowing down the Trump agenda.
But they ultimately won’t be able to stop those nominees — unless Republicans defect and join the Democratic opposition. And that fact has begun to grate at Democrats, who have complained bitterly at Republicans’ stands against Obama’s nominees — most notably their unprecedented refusal to even give the President’s Supreme Court choice, Merrick Garland, a hearing.
This is what happens when people – not just politicians either – act as though they can’t lose, thus they will never suffer the consequences of their actions.
It is a lesson Democrats are not going to be happy about learning. But one that Republicans, even as they wield their dominion over the presidency and congress, had better remember as well.
In politics, nothing is forever.
Can the Dems in the Senate ask for the old rules back (60 votes to end a filibuster).
After all, the new rules (51 votes to end a filibuster) were put in under Harry Reid’s (D-NV) leadership, and Reid is nuttier than a fruitcake.