

When Harry Reid failed to push for more aggressive filibuster reform, some on the left called it caving. That argument fell apart when the attempt to block Chuck Hagel was thwarted. When the GOP attempted to block the nomination, Reid used the new set of rules to simply ignore them, and the vote to confirm will be held on Friday. And he is continuing with that tack, now preparing to put the vote for Brennan on the schedule, ignoring attempts to block the vote.





As Addicting Info noted before, the change to the rules in the United States Senate were subtle, but they held the promise of preventing the most egregious abuses of the system. Reid is demonstrating precisely why he is the Senate Majority Leader, by using the new rules put into place by a 86-9 and 78-16 vote. Now to block either nominee, the Republican obstructionists will need to do the unthinkable: actually perform a filibuster on a nominee. Reid is no fool, and the system put into place now puts the spotlight directly on the Republican obstructionists. Unless they are willing to dance in that spotlight, they have lost the ability to block nominations.

Ignoring the hold makes use of a small piece of the Senate often times overlooked. If you read the Senate glossary on the hold:

An informal practice by which a senator informs his or her floor leader that he or she does not wish a particular bill or other measure to reach the floor for consideration. The majority leader need not follow the senator’s wishes, but is on notice that the opposing senator may filibuster any motion to proceed to consider the measure.

The Republicans now will have to face the music, and either go all the way and do the unthinkable, or accept that these men will be the next administrators of their various departments. Being the “party of no” has lost them major elections, and only through gerrymandering and other such tricks have they held on to even the minimum of power in government. They are only one election away from complete disaster.

The imminent collapse of the Republican Party is being accelerated by their party bosses and leaders in Congress. Unless they start engaging in the system, instead of attempting to sabotage it, by this time in 2015, we likely will be looking as a very different political landscape in Washington D.C.



Nathaniel Downes is the son of a former state representative of New Hampshire, now living in Seattle Washington.

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