They’re prepping the congressional battlefield for the two toughest fights the Dems will have in 2017: the repeal of Obamacare and the confirmation of Trump’s nomination of a conservative to replace the late Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. Those are the two most important campaign promises Trump made that have to be accomplished in the coming year if they’re going to be accomplished at all.
The Dems will mount their first round filibusters when the confirmation process begins. They will filibuster some of the cabinet and subcabinet folks as a warm-up so that they and their media allies can practice for the two bigger battles. Once Trump makes a first nomination for the Supreme Court or offers Congress a proposal to repeal Obamacare, they’ll pull out all the stops.
That can’t be blown past even if the Republican Senate invokes the “nuclear option” to revoke the filibuster rule.
When Harry Reid, the last Senate Democratic leader, nuked the Republicans by revoking the filibuster rule in 2013, he did so by simple majority vote.
The 2013 nuclear event prevented the Republicans from filibustering most of Obama’s nominees. But Reid’s new rule didn’t prevent them from filibustering Supreme Court nominees or legislation. Before this election, the Dems were rumored to be planning to extend the filibuster ban to Supreme Court nominations as well, if they’d regained control of the Senate.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
