At least temporarily, the reasonable Hugh Hewitt I used to read every day is back:
What needs to happen is a bipartisan agreement, formalized in a new rule, on how all nominations should be handled –with no blue slips, no “holds,” no endless delays, no last minute witnesses appearing with conjured up tales of harassment, no filibusters. Perhaps more nominees without majority support will lose –and on simple ideological grounds– but at least we can start to drain the swamp.
I think that is all something we can get behind, although it will be impossible. The way the Senate avoided the partisan brinksmanship we have witnessed over the past few years was with blue slips and rule 4 and other maneuvers like this. When we came to power, we stripped the Democrats of all of these things, thus forcing them to resort to the filibuster.
In other words, if you want give and take, you are going to have to go back to the pre-2002 way of businessm or just admit that what you want is majority rule with no exceptions.
At any rate, it is nice to see the normal Hugh back.
Ben
Can’t stand to read Hewitt any longer… he is the most anti-gay asshole with a microphone. Hugh suffers from the same thing that lush limbaugh and Sean insanity do… they mentally masturbate on air for 3-4 hours a day repeating the same canards over and over again without giving the least little thought to the other side of the issue. Hugh was absolutely apoplectic over gay marriage (still is), Shiavo, etc. Any person who completely buys into the entire agenda of either party just isn’t thinking for themselves.
smijer
My answer to this mess is to do two things:
1) Eliminate the power to “set precedent” (ignore rules) by a 51 vote majority. You should need the same majority to “interpret” the rules as you do to change them.
2) Change the cloture rules to allow for 51 vote cloture, as long as 1 vote from each 15 members of any caucus present is included in that 51. This avoids the possibility that a party-line 51 votes can bring a matter to a vote, protecting minority rights. It also creates an impetus for voting third party where a third party best represents your interests.
This way simple but not homogenous majorities can more-or-less safely rule.