Coincidentally, Hillsdale College sends out a montly newsletter, "Imprimis" in which January 2017 edition features US House of Representative Tom McClintock's essay on the same issue.
The argument for not using the nuclear option is to preserve the traditional role of the Senate of slowing the pace, promoting compromise, and maintaining the rights of the minority. The article describes an alternative but I'm not convinced the filibuster is worth preserving. The Senate is no longer what it was - does anyone see a reason it should be?
Rule 19.
The argument that using the nuclear option ensures that the dims will do likewise presupposes that they likely won’t use it unless we do. I’m not buying....
Psst...I got a secret for you. The democrats are going to do this anyway the first chance they get. Remember they are the ones that did away with the 60 vote rule on all other offices.
We can't afford to keep the nomination bottled up that long. For Republicans, there is no point in NOT hitting the Nuclear Option. We all know that the Dems would nuke the filibuster rule in a heartbeat if the Repubs dared to actually try to filibuster anything the Left cares about, if the Dems ever had a majority.
“Empower Democrats when they retake the Senate”?? What planet do they think they are living on? The Democrats respect no rules — they have used, and will again use, the nuclear option whenever it suits their purposes, and ther won’t be nice to us just because we were nice to them.
The obvious reply is to prevent them from retaking the Senate and the White House.
We can start with a special commission to evaluate, identify, and prevent voter fraud, with the imprisonment of those guilty, and the appointment of a special commission to evaluate, identify, and prevent government corruption--measures that should be taken anyway.
Stupid Question Department: If the repubs invoked the nuclear option for Gorsuch, then kept it in place for the next 4 years, why can’t they un-invoke it on the eve of a losing election, and raising the threshold necessary to re-invoke it back up to 60 votes. That way, they get the benefits while em-placing a major obstacle to the dems doing the same thing once a majority dem senate is seated. It CAN be revoked, can’t it?
Reid killed the filibuster (and the senate). Trying to pretend the senate is still a slow, deliberative body is ridiculous after the games the Ds played to pass the ACA then Reid’s killing of the filibuster “in limited situations”.
The Ds have no intention of the senate ever being a functional part of the US government again. It is a tool for their party to use/abuse to whatever extent they can based on the number of seats they occupy.
If only the GOP had the balls to behave this way when the “wise latina” or the fat bull-dyke were proposed.
I’ve argued that the Senate needs to return to the 1960’s era of filibuster practice, where a filibustering Senator was required to continue making a speech on the Senate floor in order for his filibuster to continue. In recent decades they did away with the actual filibuster, and just “as a courtesy” accepted the threat/promise of a filibuster based on vote counts and did not vote on issues.
Enforcing/invoking Rule 19 as discussed in this article seems to provide for the same result where a Senator must go through the actual speech-making to hold the floor, and still can not prevent a vote indefinitely, as physical limitations of sleep and other bodily needs and functions will eventually win out.
I like it.
It’s a good backup in case the Republicans fall short of the number of senators needed to go nuclear.
But I’m against the filibuster altogether. It brought us forth a Senate that carves its will into stone on the rare occasions that a filibuster-proof majority exists. And that’s bad governance.
Ban the filibuster. Return the drafting of laws back to the legislature, and away from the imperial presidency.
The Senate should be what the Founders intended: a representative body promoting the interest of the several States, answerable to the governments of the several States. The 17th Amendment needs to be repealed.
And this would be different how?
The principle basis for the filibuster was weakened decades ago and since Reid, it has cracked and widened.
It cannot be repaired if there is no unity to provide the glue in cementing it together.
It’s a lost cause.
The moral deterioration in the arena of elected offices, the debased culture, the prevalent normalized greed of wealth concentration centers, the cheapening of human life, the breakdown in standards across the board, have followed a process of what Kyle Bass calls “Social Entropy”.
The only means to reestablish respect for principles of governance is to suffer the process end which is social upheaval if not war itself.
The suited democrat US Senators with their seemingly civilized parliamentary procedures and calm manners may seem a far cry from the masked rogue cowardly criminal gangs on the streets of Berkeley ...
but open their skulls and likely one will find the same maggot induced rot of megalomania that rules them all.
The Repubs should invoke the nuke on general principles.
The Dems would do it without thinking twice.
The Dems never play fair; it’s time their got a spoon of their own medicine.
If not for the precedent of the 1964 CRA I would be ambivalent, but this is genius.
Thanks for posting it.
