Posted on 09/29/2014 12:18:20 PM PDT by TitansAFC
Prepare for the return of the confirmation fight.
If Republicans capture the Senate majority in November, their sway over prominent judgeships and Cabinet vacancies — potentially including a new attorney general — will become one of the GOP’s primary leverage points against President Barack Obama.
But first the GOP must decide whether to adopt Senate Democrats’ bellicose tactic to allow approval of most executive branch nominees by a simple majority vote. The rules change to the filibuster was implemented by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), but it could now come back to bite him...
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
The most important point is that Obama has two years to go and will no doubt try to pack every court with super-liberal judges. The goal of the Senate GOP is to stop that. With the 50 vote rule in place he will get a lot more nominees through. The 48 donks will only need 3 traitors to get his appointments through. If they go back to the 60 vote rule, then the bar is much higher, and his plot to court-pack will likely be foiled.
If the GOP wins the Whitehouse and holds the Senate then they can go to the 50 vote simple majority at that time. If Hillary wins stay with the 60.
Seems like a smart move to me. It's what Donks do: constantly move the rules to achieve your political goals without concern about precedent or tradition. This *could* be the start of GOP hardball, not the cave-in people seem to be suspecting.
Mitch McConnell has *already announced* that when he becomes senate majority leader, the first thing he will do is bow down to the Democrats and offer them everything they denied the Republicans.
AGAIN!!!
What is it with those GOP-e lame brains? Why are they acting like beaten, co-dependent spouses? THIS MUST STOP!
This is why it is vital for Kentucky conservative to NOT vote in the race between McConnell and Grimes. Six more years of McConnell and it could destroy our nation. Just let him lose because conservatives won’t vote for him.
That spineless twit could even neuter the first administration of a conservative Republican POTUS, after Obama, by just refusing to advance his agenda. Why? Because it is a *conservative* agenda, and McConnell doesn’t like conservative anything.
Seriously, McConnell is threatening to destroy the United States of America, far more effectively than Osama bin Laden ever did. He is acting like a loyal slave to the Democrats.
As senate majority leader, he will also be in a strong position to force the choice of only Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney on us. However, if he loses his position, it may rattle the RINOs and GOP-e enough for conservatives to seize the Republican National Convention.
Is that motivation enough to NOT vote for McConnell?
Save our nation, defeat the Democrats, get a conservative elected as president. All because Kentucky conservatives refused to vote for him.
As soon as you find out, let us all know...
As usual, the GOPe is more worried about being called names by the Rats than governing.
lol
so basically republicans need 60 votes to govern, but democrats only need 50?
WTH!!!!
Please explain to me why, in a closely held GOP Senate, it’s a good thing for Obama nominees to need only 50 votes and not 60 to get lifetime appointments to the bench?
Please, tell me, I’m all ears.
Does anybody get it that political whores will promise anything to get elected and then do exactly as they please once in office?
Nothing that is said within 6 months of an election is likely to have any real meaning in the scheme of things. Repeating this drivel is the only hope for opponents to suppress the vote.
If we intend to have a fight, we had better win it at the primary because pissing on the candidate who won is only going to give the really bad guys a helping hand. If you can’t win the primary, then you may not have had much of a candidate or platform.
Many here predicted that this would happen when the Rats changed the filibuster rule to enable them to pack the courts with extremists liberals.
60 votes to confirm judges seems like a good thing to me...given the character of the current dictator in chief, and the fact that he has 2 years as a lame duck with which to further pack the courts with Constitution haters.
Thanks. You brought me back from the brink.
I’m still rather frustrated, though.
I’m all for changing the rules back. BUT,ONLY AFTER the GOP gets to push through an equal number of nominees as the ‘Rats have gotten under Reid’s scheme.
I believe I said as much.
“So to sum up: they want to make sure that only the Democrats were able to stack the judiciary by using the “Nuclear Option.””
It is to protect against the 5 crossover republicans. By going with 60, there will be no way Obama gets anyone through. Then when Cruz takes over with a republican senate, you go back to 50.
What an idiot the author of the article is. He knows the GOP will have no leverage because, as usual, they give it away.
They couldn’t even stop Holder from being AG when they had the Senate back then. And he’s the worse AG we’ve ever had.
McConnell would probably do a power sharing agreement with Reid like Lott did with Daschale.
The GOP never misses a chance to shoot themselves in the foot!
It's almost like they are part of the same club, or "party" shall we say.....
I’m not convinced the gopE wants to win the senate. If they do win it they’ll make it easy for the democrats to sabotage everything then they’ll be blamed in 2016 and the democrats will take over again.
If we continue to set-up a system where every GOP President must reach 60 votes, and every Democrat President only 50 votes, there will soon be no point to elections.
The GOP will never invoke the Nuclear Option under ANY circumstance. The ONLY chance we have of getting judges through in the future is to leave the new rules intact. The benefit of being able to use the Democrats own rules against them in order to bypass their historic obstructionism far outweighs the handful of nominees who MIGHT get confirmed IF a handful of GOP Senators act as traitors during the lame duck years of the Obama Presidency.
The long-term gain FAR outweighs the short-term loss, and I'm not convinced the GOP is in ANY mood, even the Establishment types, to rush any more judges through after what their Democrat colleagues did to them. Even the GOP-E Senators are saying the Democrats have gotten more than their fair share of nominees due to the rule changes.
Under NO circumstance short they change the rules back, or let them get changed back, PERIOD!
You are correct. What the Republicans should do (but won't) if they take the Senate is immediately reestablish the nuclear option, calling it "The Harry Reid Rule."
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