ConfirmThem

By AndrewHyman Posted in Senate Rules — Comments () / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Larry Kudlow writes in National Review:

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid doesn't seem to get the fact that George W. Bush won the presidential election last November. He also doesn’t get that the Republicans picked up five seats in the Upper Chamber. That’s called a mandate.

Despite this, Reid believes he can negotiate, or even dictate, which judicial appointments can be voted on in the Senate. That's utterly preposterous, and it's one of the many reasons why Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist must put Reid and the rest of the filibustering Senate Democrats in their place.

….

It's time for the Senate Republicans to go nuclear. It’s time for the president and the GOP to enjoy the mandate they earned in the voting booth last fall.

Linda Chavez is more ambivalent about the so-called nuclear option, and instead she would prefer to try forcing a real, live filibuster:

Why not just insist that senators who want to filibuster actually do so, bringing work in the Senate to a halt?… [The GOP] may end up making themselves look like the heavies instead of forcing the Democrats to take center stage as the real fanatics. Let the filibuster stay --- and force the Democrats to actually use it.

Ms. Chavez raises a good question, and one which some others have also raised during the past two years. But, the GOP Senate leadership has carefully considered and answered that question. For example, Sen. Frist's office yesterday issued a statement titled, "Senate Procedure 101: Why Not Go 24/7 on Judges?," quoting a Congressional Research Service report that says forcing a real filibuster would be, "more of a burden on the proponents of the question being debated" than on the filibusterers. I had some further comments about this issue here. The bottom line is that either the Chavez solution or the solution being pursued by the Senate GOP would be a vast improvement over the situation we have had over the past two years.

As we mentioned, Senator Norm Coleman did an interview yesterday, and the transcript is now posted here.