As you know, the Democrats voted to change the Senate
procedure to “majority rule” for executive branch and judicial nominees. Why’d
they do this? Because of Senator Mitch McConnell (Republican, Kentucky) and his
G.O.P. colleagues, who routinely reject any Obama nominee because, well, they
are Obama nominees.
And now that the Senate rules have changed, McConnell is
spitting mad! Which is kind of odd, given that he said this back in 2005.
“I think the president is entitled to an up-or-down--that is simple majority--vote on nominations, both to his Cabinet and to the executive branch and also to the judiciary. The filibuster was not used for 200 years. The country did just fine. Sometimes the court would jag off to the left, and sometimes it would slide over to the right. Presidents trying to mold the Supreme Court is nothing new. It's not inappropriate. And we need to get back to tradition, and the tradition is a majority is enough to confirm a judge.”
But once a Democrat was elected president, all bets were
off! During Obama’s presidency, there’ve been 81 cloture motions – attempts at
defeating a filibuster.
In just Obama’s first five years he got clotured more than
all the other presidents combined since filibusters of judicial and executive
branch nominees began in 1968. Prior to Obama, cloture was invoked 68 times
total. Obama? 81!
In 2005, McConnell explained why these clotures were rare:
“What typically happens is we exercise self-restraint, and we do not engage in that kind of behavior because invoking certain obstructionist tactics would upset the Senate's unwritten rules.”
