Senate Republicans Debate Using ‘Nuclear Option’ to End Filibusters
By National Review
Published on September 25, 2015
A debate over ending the Democratic minority’s ability to filibuster legislation has broken out among Senate Republicans. “I will tell you there’s just a lot of push from a lot of people,” one GOP senator speaking on condition of anonymity tells National Review. “They’ve seen the Democrats do it, so they want Republicans to do it.” Such a change would require the use of the so-called “nuclear option,” the rule change Democrats employed in 2013 to make judicial nominations confirmable by a simply majority rather than by the traditional three-fifths vote. Though Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) wants to protect the filibuster, the issue is blurring the establishment/conservative battle lines typical of other recent debates within the GOP conference. Republicans’ failure to produce the legislative victories that their conservative constituents hoped for, despite complete control of Congress, has even some leadership allies contemplating a move to end the legislative stalling tactic.
The debate went public last week when former National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman Jerry Moran (R., Kan.) called for the GOP to nuke the filibuster in order to win a final vote on a bill disapproving of the Iran deal. “This becomes the moment, in my view, in which you can look at what has transpired on the debate on Iran and reach the conclusion that the 60-vote rule is damaging to the future of our country,” Moran said. Two days later, 57 House Republicans reiterated Moran’s view in a letter to McConnell. Moran’s statement received scant media attention, but it marked a change from his 2012 position that the filibuster is an important means of protecting the minority. Senator Lamar Alexander (R. Tenn.) deemed the reversal serious enough to warrant a public response. “Most of the time, Republicans have been the minority needing that protection,” Alexander said. “If Republicans use the nuclear option, we would be operating in the same lawless fashion that the Democrats did in 2013.”
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