Mutually Assured Distractions
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009During the Bush Presidency, Republican Senators threatened the use of the “nuclear option” to end potential filibusters by the Democrats on Bush judicial nominees. Basically the way it works is that the President of the Senate would rule that judicial nominations can be the subject of the filibuster, someone GOP Senator would challenge the ruling of the chair, and then it would go to an immediate vote without debate (so you cannot filibuster that vote). The filibuster would be stopped and the vote could take place.
Now, the nuclear option was never used during the Bush Presidency. However, the threat of it was enough to cause the formation of the “Gang of 14″, a group that limited filibusters of judicial nominees to extreme cases.
Personally, I don’t like the use of parliamentary trickery in order to circumvent the rules and get your way. However, I think the door has been blown wide open with the passage of the House healthcare bill for the Democrats to start flying the political Enola Gay. Fox News wrongly calls reconciliation the nuclear option. But reconciliation is a whole different animal.
If the Senate wanted to, it could just introduce the House version of the bill and threaten to use the nuclear option to eliminate any filibuster. If the moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats really thought that the Democrats seriously would use the nuclear option, perhaps it would get them to the table to negotiate something reasonable so this needed reform could pass without the need of either a filibuster or the nuclear option.
