GOP’s existential test: Why they’re really escalating a nuclear option crisis

[DonViejo]

GOP’s existential test: Why they’re really escalating a nuclear option crisis

Republicans aren't just testing Constitutional limits -- they're making a gamble about their own political fortunes

BRIAN BEUTLER

Here are a couple questions with fairly obvious answers. (Spoiler alert, the answers are, “no,” and “no.”)

1). If Mitt Romney were president, would Senate Republicans deny confirmation to his D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals nominees based on a specious argument that the court’s caseload doesn’t merit a full complement of judges?

2). If Mitt Romney were president, and Senate Democrats were reverse court packing — filibustering all of his judicial nominees, regardless of merit — to prevent him from altering the ideological balance of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, or any court, would Republicans stand for it?

I’ve tried to avoid this construction in the past because the case for Democrats nuking the filibuster right now is substantively very strong, and meta whining about the GOP’s relative procedural extremism distracts from that argument.

But I want to make an exception today, because I think the obviousness of the answers to these questions suggests Republicans fully understand what they’re doing, and are provoking a nuclear option crisis intentionally as a gamble on their own political fortunes.

full article:
http://www.salon.com/2013/11/20/gops_existential_test_why_theyre_really_escalating_a_nuclear_option_crisis/

[Hippo_Tron]

1. In retrospect we should've just confirmed Miguel Estrada, Priscilla Owen, and Janice Rogers Brown

2 out of 3 wound up on the court anyway, and I suspect Obama's nominees will for the same reason, because we'll wave the nuclear option in their face.

Still, Bush really should not have started off his presidency by forcing the ABA out of the vetting process.