With Harry Reid as Democrat Senate Majority leader, it was easy to predict that the bi-partisan agreement John McCain, Lindsay Graham and the other RINOs who constituted the Gang of 14 back in 2005 when Republicans controlled the Senate would fall apart as soon as the Democrats felt like it and had a majority.
The deal back then was that Bill Frist,then the GOP Senate Majority leader wanted to change the Senate rules to allow the confirmation of judges by simple majority. McCain and his playmates undercut him with 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 Republicans figured that someday they would be in the minority and would want their rights similarly respected.
Harry Reid,the Minority leader at that time thought this was a dandy idea and praised the compromise as a true example of bipartisan cooperation.With a straight face, and without busting out laughing.
As soon as the Democrats got the senate majority all that kumbaya stuff went out the windowq of course. Aside from changing procedural rules to shove through ObamaCare, Reid used the nuclear option in October of 2011 to kill a a post-cloture amendment by a simple majority on the president's Jobs bill....even though he had to ignore the Senate parliamentarian's ruling to do it.
Reid is now threatening to use the nuclear option again to permanently change the senate rules and cut off all filibusters by the minority party, in this case, the Republicans.
The reason is that the Republicans are filibustering judicial appointments to the DC Court of Appeals, which the president wants to pack with radical appointees because its rulings have a significant impact on federal regulatory policy. Even though that court is currently split between Republican and Democrat appointees, our Dear Leader has suffered more than a few defeats there and wants to, shall we say, eliminate the uncertainty.
Is Reid serious? I have a feeling he's just throwing the threat out there to see if the Republicans cave in, but if he goes there it's not exactly smart policy. President Obama's numbers are rapidly plummeting and as unpopular as ObamaCare is now, it's going to be even worse next year when the ObamaCare mandates gut the employer-provided group insurance policies the way its hit the individual policies this year. There are 21 Democrat senate seats up for re-election this year,and a lot of them are in Red States, held by incumbents who joined the president in lying to their constituencies about ObamaCare.
Things could change, and change significantly. I find it hard to believe that Reid doesn't realize that if the filibuster isn't honored as a check and balance, a GOP majority could treat the Democrats exactly the way they're being treated now, with presidential appointments and legislation being subject to a simple up or down majority vote..which could lead to the undoing of ObamasCare and pretty much everything else Harry Reid and this president have shoved through.
And hyper-partisanship will definitely ramp up, even worse than now.
We'll see what happens...
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