You know, Obama has disappointed a lot of people.....

[Hippo_Tron]

158. The Republicans would argue that Democrats pulled things had never done before...

Probably starting with voting down Bork's confirmation in the 80's. Remember, Scalia was confirmed 96-0. Bork was the first time (at least in recent history) where a Supreme Court nominee was rejected on ideological grounds.

I think it was felt at the time that "advice and consent" was meant to be a check on the President only to prevent him from appointing people truly unfit for office, and was not something to be used for ideological reasons. So when the Democrats rejected Bork for ideological reasons, the Republicans started using the judiciary committee to block Clinton's nominees when they were in power. This was also unprecedented because they were denying nominees a floor vote. Then the Democrats did it using the filibuster, also unprecedented, because the filibuster hadn't really been used that way before. Now the Republicans are using the filibuster and they're doing it to block an unprecedented number of Obama nominees. The cycle goes on...

But I do think that the only way to fix the problem is to return to the pre-1976 filibuster rules where you have to actually stand up and talk if you want to block something. The country can't function forever with a de facto 3/5ths majority required to pass anything. Bicameralism and the Presidential veto make things hard enough as it is.