IBD:
The Senate Majority Leader has a plan to deal with Republican electoral success. When you lose the game, you simply change the rules. When you only have 53 votes, you lower the bar to 51.
When Harry Reid was hawking his book "The Good Fight" on C-Span's "Book Notes" in 2008, he described how he had vehemently opposed GOP plans for the "nuclear option," changing the rules to break a Democratic filibuster on President George W. Bush's judicial nominees. Only 51 votes would be needed to move them along.
"What the Republicans came up with was a way to change our country forever," Reid stated. "We would in fact have a unicameral legislature where a simple majority would determine everything that happens ... the Senate was set up to be different. That was the genius, the vision, of our Founding Fathers."
Reid forgot the Founding Fathers when he considered something similar to get ObamaCare through the Senate and on President Obama's desk.
Now he is planning to use the same mechanism he once considered a threat to democracy to thwart GOP gains in the Senate and outright control of the House of Representatives.
Currently, under Senate Rule 22 it takes a three-fifths vote, or 60 senators, for cloture to shut off the potentially endless debate known as a filibuster.
But it takes a two-thirds vote, or 67 Senators, to change a Senate rule. The reason is the differing nature of the House and Senate.
...
Let them change the rules. We now have the House to block them on most things and we can use the new rules to shut them down after we gain more seats in 2012. Let them know we are looking forward to the process.
Cover of The Good Fight
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