On The Nuclear Option

So.

We've gone and nuked the Senate.

And not a moment too soon, in my opinon.

Yes, I remember vividly, during the Bush Administration, when the "nuclear option" was bandied about by Republicans, because Democrats were filibustering Bush's conservative court nominations, something which previously had been done rarely and with much more meaty reasoning behind it than "it's your party against ours and we're not gonna let you do that."

Ten years ago, I'm pretty sure I was thoroughly convinced that the judiciously applied filibuster was the only way for the Democrats, as minority party, to prevent Republicans from completely and immediately turning the government over to moneyed  interests, and setting things up so that those moneyed interests would control things well into the future.  Democrats used the filibuster to block only Bush's most heinously biased conservative appointees.  But it's obvious by the graphic below, that the Republican minority in today's senate has taken that "minority control" tool, used it and abused it to an unprecedented degree.  The uncontrolled use of the filibuster has become the primary weapon in the arsenal of Republican lawmakers, whose professed goal since November 4, 2008 has been to "make this president fail."

The rampant use of the filibuster has become  a huge contributing factor to the dysfunctionality of our federal government.And it had to stop.

It's too bad that the task of applying this "nuclear" fix fell to Senate Democrats. And, yes...this probably will come back to bite them in the ass should they lose their slim majority in that body.  

But something had to be done.  Somebody had to take an axe to the log jam.

And now, it's done.

Good.  Now maybe we can get on with the business of government.