Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid can dish it out, but he can’t take it.
Harry Reid was
Senate Democratic Whip when George W. Bush became president. Under him, the
Senate Democrats mounted an unprecedented filibuster campaign against Bush’s
judicial nominees. According to The Heritage Foundation’s Todd Gaziano, the
average number of days a Court of Appeals nominee waited for final Senate
action grew from 39 during the Reagan Presidency, 95 during the George H. W.
Bush Presidency, and 115 during the Clinton Presidency to 400 during the first
22 months of the second Bush presidency.
The Democrats’
unprecedented delays imposed upon Bush’s judicial nominees resulted in talk of
using the nuclear option to end the Democrats’ filibusters. The nuclear option
is shorthand for changing the Senate rules so that presidential nominations
would no longer be subject to filibuster — meaning they could be approved with
just 51 votes, as opposed to the usual 60.
This is
something that Senate Democrats warned about in apocalyptic terms when they
were in the minority. In May 2005 it
looked as if Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist was actually going to pull the nuclear trigger.
Sen. Reid gave a good speech on the Senate floor explaining
why nuking the filibuster would be wrong:...To Read More.....
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