Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has threatened Republican Senators that if they don't agree to a deal on severely curtailing filibusters, he will activate what's known as the Nuclear Option - changing the Senate's rules by a simple majority vote:
Reid’s trump card in negotiations with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) is the threat he will change Senate rules with a simple majority vote, a tactic known as the nuclear option. This maneuver would allow Reid to change the Senate rules with a simple majority vote, something that has never been done, according to parliamentary experts.
Critics call it the nuclear option but proponents, such as Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) say it is more accurate to describe it as the “Constitutional option” because the Constitution empowers each chamber to set its own rules.
Reid predicted the Democratic caucus would support him in reforming the Senate’s filibuster rule unilaterally.
You may remember that term Nuclear Option...when the GOP controlled the Senate during the Bush Administration in 2005 and faced obstruction from Democrats on confirming judges, former Senate Majority leader Bill Frist thought about using this, but was talked out of it by the Gang of Fourteen,a bi-partisan group of senators that pledged not to use the Nuclear option and change the rules, but to compromise and not filibuster except 'under extraordinary circumstances'.
The leader of that group? Senator John McCain, flanked by Republicans Olympia Snow, Susan Collins, Lindsay Graham, Lincoln Chaffey, Mike DeWine, and John Warner.
The rationale given by McCain then was -wait for it - that someday they would be in the minority and would want their rights similarly respected!
Harry Reid,the Minority leader at that time welcomed the compromise and touted it publicly as a true example of bipartisan cooperation.
As we can see now, behind everyone's back he and his pals were laughing uproariously at the Republican members of the Gang of 14's naïveté and stupidity in trusting him and his fellow Democrats to make that same quid pro quo once they got their hands on power.
I hope every one of the three Republican on the list above still in the Senate realizes how badly they were played and what idiots they were to trust Harry Reid and his minions. And I hope they appreciate how it has led to the marginalization of themselves and every other Republican senator, as the Democrats now pass whatever rules they want to govern the Senate:
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