[hobbes1]

I don't think that would work, because in order for the amendment to be voted on, you would need unanimous consent to bring it to a vote, correct?

That doesn't make sense. If you have Unanimous Consent, there would be no need to vote, and any senator that wanted to hide from a vote, could merely object.

Do you think there would have been a cloture vote.

The obstacle to rules change is the Percentage it takes (2/3 of those PRESENT and Voting)....Not unanimous Consent.

[BreitbartSentMe]

From what I understand, unanimous consent is not a voting procedure, per se, but a motion made to move a procedure along. IOW, here's how I think things like this have to be done:
First you have a senator(s) bring a bill or rule change forward for consideration. Then there is debate on the merits of it. Then, when everyone has discussed it to their satisfaction, and knows how they want to vote, they ask for unanimous consent to move to the vote. If even one senator isn't ready to stop discussing it, they just object to the motion to move to the vote (so you no longer have unanimous consent.) That's what the democrats are doing with the Estrada nomination. They just keep objecting to moving to the vote on the issue.

The only way to FORCE the senate to move anything to a vote is to invoke cloture. That takes 3/5 of the entire senate (it used to be 2/3 of the senators present and voting, that's how the old-style 7/24 filibusters used to be, you had to keep your entire caucus present for the entire discussion)

This procedure would also have to be used for a rules change. As long as one democrat was present to object to the unanimous consent motion to move to the vote, it couldn't happen, except by invoking cloture, hereby insituting the 48 hour rule. The only difference is when you finally were able to move the issue to a vote, the vote itself would just need 2/3 of those present to approve the acutal rule change. The Estrada nomination only takes a simple majority to approve, however, we are unable to get the motion to stop debate and move to the vote approved...........YET

Clear as mud???