What I'm trying to figure out is how this differs from the status quo. If Reid does the nuclear option the GOP promises to do their worst-again, evidently they're claiming things aren't the worst now.
By going the nuclear route, Republicans are warning that Reid would set a damaging precedent that would come back to haunt Democrats should the GOP take back the Senate majority. They could seek to further weaken filibuster rules by a straight majority vote, effectively helping them to advance a conservative agenda, including the repeal of Obamacare."
“I don’t think it’s going to happen because then when Republicans get into the majority, we will be able to pass legislation and nominees with 51 votes,” said Texas Sen. John Cornyn, the No. 2 Republican. “So I think it’s very shortsighted and would be fundamentally damaging to the Senate as an institution, which encourages deliberation and debate rather than just jamming stuff through on a partisan basis.”
The GOP is actually warning that if we were to end the filibuster on executive nominees the they would respond by tying up all legislation including must-pass appropriations and debt ceiling bills. I mean they're making these threats with a straight face?
Right now even as the deficit is coming down they are threatening to use the debt ceiling to try to force more deep spending cuts.
Meanwhile this is what the current GOP is doing-prior to the horror of 51 votes for executive nominees:
"it goes well beyond Obamacare implementation and the relentless blockading of Obama nominees for the explicit purpose of preventing democratically-created agencies from functioning. We’ve slowly crossed over into something a bit different. It’s now become accepted as normal that Republicans will threaten explicitly to allow harm to the country to get what they want, and will allow untold numbers of Americans to be hurt rather than even enter into negotiations over the sort of compromises that lie at the heart of basic governing."
"Sam Stein’s big piece today details the very real toll the sequester cuts are taking on real people across the country, and crucially, it explains that the sequester was deliberately designed to threaten harm in order to compel lawmakers to act to reduce the deficit. But Republicans will not consider replacing those cuts with anything other than 100 percent in cuts elsewhere, which is to say, they will only consider replacing them with 100 percent of what they want. Meanwhile, Republicans are drawing up a list of spending cuts they will demand in exchange for raising the debt limit, even though John Boehner has openly admitted that default would do untold damage to the U.S. economy. Indeed, even if default doesn’t end up happening, the threat of it risks damaging the economy, yet Republicans still insist they will use it as leverage to get what they want, anyway."
Turns out then that this is nothing new. The GOP is again strapping dynamite to itself and threatening to blowup the country if it doesn't get what it wants. Can you think of a better argument to do the nuclear option that this? After all, the GOP strategy will be the same either way.
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