Stop it Harry Reid, You Had Me at 'Disagree'

     Reid is clearly drawing a line in the sand in the face of unprecedented GOP obstruction. Him and Mitch McConnell had a discussion today and-it didn't go well.

    "Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell have been slugging it out on the Senate floor today over Reid’s threat to revisit filibuster reform, and the escalating tone suggests this is now very real. Pay close attention to the statement Reid released today about their exchange:

Today, Senator McConnell defended the status quo of gridlock and obstruction in Washington, saying ‘there is no real problem here.’ I could not disagree more. Senator McConnell may choose to ignore it, but the problem of gridlock in Washington is real and it needs to be fixed.

Presidents — be they Republican or Democratic — deserve to have the people working for them that they choose. The Senate’s role is to advise and consent. But Republicans have corrupted the Founders’ intent, creating an unreasonable and unworkable standard whereby the weakest of rationales is often cited as sufficient basis for blocking major nominees. Due to Republican obstruction, the de facto threshold for too many nominees to be confirmed has risen from a simple majority to a supermajority of 60 votes. On judicial nominees, Republicans’ obstruction is equally unprecedented…There is no reason to delay qualified nominees for so long except delay itself, and it is little wonder we have a judicial vacancy crisis in this country.

Despite the agreement we reached in January, Republican obstruction on nominees continues unabated. I want to make the Senate work again – that is my commitment.

     http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/05/22/harry-reid-escalates-nuclear-threat/

     It's times like these I love Harry Reid. There have been a number of other times, like the time he said he had spoken to someone about Romney at Bain-Harry, my God, he didn't pay any taxes for 10 years. That was a moment of pure gold. 

    http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2012_07_01_archive.html

     This is another one. What's at stake here is making a credible threat. It's getting to the point now, that the GOP is on notice-filibuster Condray for the Financial Protection Agency and the nuclear option is coming to the Senate where the filibuster as a requirement will be abolished for executive and judicial nominees. 

    "Lending some weight to this threat, the Huffington Post reports that Reid is delaying the push to confirm Richard Cordray as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau until July, after immigration reform is done. A Reid aide tells HuffPo that this is about postponing a major war over all of Obama’s nominees until July — which is also Reid’s target to trigger the nuclear option if necessary."

    "This — along with Reid’s public statements today — amounts to the sharpest line yet drawn by Reid. The Senate Majority Leader has been striking a delicate balancing act. His challenge has been to slowly escalate the threat level by giving his threats ever more specificity, while simultaneously maintaining an aura of credibility about them. The current threat comes very close to saying that if Republicans obstruct Cordray — and others, such as Gina McCarthy to head the EPA, and Thomas Perez as Labor Secretary — then Reid will push the nuke button."

    C'mon GOPers. Make Harry's day. 

    "At any rate, given today’s public statements from Reid, if the current level of GOP obstructionism continues, it’s hard to see how he has room to not make good on his threat to hit that button."

    Essentially the GOP is going to have to backoff on the record level of obstruction at least on nominees or this is a reality. 

   By the way, from a constitutional, political philosophy standpoint I'm not sure the filibuster is the force for democratic good that It's defenders claim. It seems to me to be from a tradition of anti-democratic rules-like the time when Senators weren't even electted by Americans to even the 3/5 of a person compromise. The main impact has always been to thwart the will of the majority to the expense of the minority. We saw this just recently with gun control.