Senate Votes To Try And Distract America From The Pain Democrats Are Inflicting On America Through ObamaCare

I kind of jumped the gun earlier on the nuclear option. There was some more parliamentary wrangling to be done before the actual vote.

The Senate has now voted to allow cloture to be invoked on judicial nominees below the Supreme Court level (district and circuit courts).

The final vote was 48 yes, 52 no. That means 3 Democrats (Levin of Michigan who is retiring, Manchin of West Virginia who is...just an odd ball and Pryor of Arkansas who is up for reelection next year) voted with the GOP.

Based on the way the question was worded, Should the ruling of the Chair (that you can't end a filibuster with only 51 votes) be upheld, the Democrats voted "no" and invoked the so-called "nuclear option".

This is about a couple of things:

1. Packing the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. This court is important because most challenges to federal regulations go through that court. A small number of those cases may make it to the Supreme Court but generally, it's the last word on a lot of federal business.

2. Changing the subject for a couple of days away from the damage ObamaCare is doing to America. In addition to getting a lot of coverage today, it will lead to GOP retaliation (procedual efforts to slow the Senate down even more) that will let the DNC's media wing to do a lot of "DC is broken and the Republicans are to blame" process stories.

If you missed it earlier, read Mitch McConnell's speech on this. He framed it perfectly, it's about ObamaCare. EVERYTHING is about ObamaCare.

Best line:

“Think about it: The Majority Leader promised over and over again that he wouldn’t break the rules of the Senate in order to change them. On July 14 he went on ‘Meet the Press’ and he said: ‘We’re not touching judges.’

“He may as well just have said ‘If you like the rules of the Senate you can keep them.’

3. The hypocrisy of both parties. The GOP thought about doing this in 2005 when Democrats filibustered a bunch of Bush judicial picks. Democrats thought the filibuster was the best thing ever back then. This stuff often depends on which side you are on in a given moment.

Note that the GOP didn't go though with the nuclear option in 05. Why? Because a bunch of GOP Senators sold out the rest of the party and Bush. Funny how the Democrats never form a 'gang' to screw over their own party. Huh.

Are you mad, bro?

McCain: "I'm not angry. I'm just sad." Says filibuster changes will have huge impact on Senate.

— Noah Bierman (@Noahbierman) November 21, 2013

None of this will fix 'the website' or make the pain of ObamaCare go away. It's a short term hit for Democrats and their base. It won't affect the long term ObamaCare problems and it will open a whole new can of worms when the GOP has the majority.

posted by DrewM. at 12:32 PM

| Access Comments