It seems like if they keep waiting for their chance in he face of the threat of eliminating the filibuster, they’ve already lost. May as well just force McConnell’s hand earlier than later, since they effectively don’t have one if they can’t use it without losing it anyway.
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Yeah. The amazing power of being able to block something isn’t really that amazing if it can be taken away at any time.
ETA: maybe, in general, I could see the point of maintaining the polite fiction that it isn’t an adversarial system, but not for a McConnell-led Senate. Fuck that hypocritical sack of shit.
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I second that emotion.
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The nuclear option also isn’t a new threat from a barely-majority GOP senate since it was coined in 2001 when the GOP held 52 seats. Any Democrat who has lost their spine enough since 2001 to flip based on this posturing needs to be cut worse than Manchin and the like.
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A key point is that maintaining the filibuster and forcing the GOP to abolish it (which they will) allows the Dems to retain their (valid) critique of Gorsuch as an illegitimate appointment.
Colluding with his confirmation tars the Dems with every pro-fascist decision that he writes.
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By my reading, the GOP would need 51 votes to change the cloture vote rules via the “Nuclear option”, in order to break the Democrats’ fillibuster. And this requires affirming that the cloture vote rules present a Constitutional issue. (They would require 67 votes, to do it in the more traditional way, without claiming it’s a Constitutional issue.)
Right now, there are 52 Republicans in the Senate, and 46 Democrats. (And two “independents”, who caucus with the Democrats. Senator Bernie Sanders is one of these. Senator Angus King of Maine is the other). That’s actually not much of a margin for the Republicans. And changing the cloture rules would be breaking a long-held Senate tradition.
If the Republicans lose even two of their votes out of their 52, then they don’t have enough votes to invoke the “Nuclear option”.
I wonder whether there might be some Republicans who would have a problem with either (a) the absurd claim that there are Constitutional issues raised by the cloture vote rules, or (b) discarding a long-respected Senate tradition. Yes, the Democrats did it a couple years ago, but those were Democrats. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if there weren’t a few Republicans for whom throwing time-honored tradition in the bin for a few transient political points was morally objectionable.
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Like the time-honoured tradition that a USSC nominee, no matter how vile, should at least get a hearing? Or the tradition that a nominee should be judged on their own merits rather than being automatically blocked if they’re nominated by the other party?
I could keep that going for pages, but you get the idea.
It’s possible that some of the GOP senators may resist, but if they do it’ll be motivated by the Fascist vs Plutocrat struggle within the party, not by any considerations of decency or the greater good.
If they had any honour or integrity, they would have quit the GOP in disgust a very long time ago.
It’s not just a few transient political points, BTW. Once the USSC is returned to a GOP majority, the last meaningful restriction on Trump and Bannon is gone. They’ll lock down their disenfranchisement tactics and have them confirmed as “constitutional”, permanently neutering any possibility of peaceful regime change.
Game over unless you’re willing to take it to Civil War Part II.
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Either way, two is all it takes. If there are just two hold-outs amongst the 52 Republican senators, then the Democrats’ filibuster holds.
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…unless an equal number of Dems betray their constituents.
Which, given the corruption and spinelessness of most of the Dem incumbents, is quite likely.
But, yeah; there is a chance of delaying the end until the midterms. That’s when the big test comes: can the Trumpeters successfully purge the GOP of any possible resistance by primarying the disloyal?
My money’s on yes. To borrow from Mencken, no one ever went broke underestimating the ethical standards of the GOP.
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Nats win?
Must be fake news.
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I guess that’s why he wimped out of throwing the first pitch?
(that and probably not being able to throw a decent first pitch)
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“Thanks for the inauguration pics beeoch” it reads on the back.
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Mark @frauenfelder’s friend Rick has a BRILLIANT idea:
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But, he was the best athlete in NY state!
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Phenomenal.
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I think he’s kind of all of us right now.
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