Coming out of last weekend, the surest way to divide the Republicans who are in the loop from the also-rans was to see which had received the non-nuclear memo. The GOP, whose strategists are masters at language-shaping, have been working hard to have their way on the Senate Democrats’ filibuster of a few Bush judicial nominees.
One option on the table is for the Republican majority to simply kill the longstanding senatorial exercise of filibustering. The way it has worked for about 200 years is that if a minority of senators (or even just one senator) wishes, they can hold up legislation or presidential appointments as long as they’re willing to hold the floor.
Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., is believed to have coined the apt phrase for the discarding of the filibuster. Back in 2003, Lott labeled it the “nuclear option” and the phrase caught on among both parties. That changed this past weekend, though.
Now, the Republicans are trotting out “constitutional option” as a substitute and pinning the “nuclear” phrase as an invention of the Democrats. All of this verbal shape-shifting has some doing contortions.
We’d counsel against pushing the Orwellian panic button. The change might be something as simple as a courtesy. Republicans could just be looking out for their president, who says “nook-u-ler,” while his fellow party members and most others correctly pronounce it “nook-lee-er”?
Regardless of how the option is pronounced, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid needs to be careful with how he handles the fallout. The Nevada Democrat’s suggestion of shutting down the Senate in response would be unwise. We challenge Reid and his colleagues to find a more creative way to display the outrage caused by a few rogue elephants changing the rules just so they can wedge extremist judges onto the federal bench.
Shutting down the Senate would make Reid appear as an obstructionist. In the process, he would hand his foes a powerful nuclear (or “nook-u-ler”) weapon.
