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Republicans must stand tall in face of Trump’s call for nuclear option

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The nuclear option is a complex procedure, used in times of duress, during which the ruling of the chair may be confirmed by a simple majority vote. It lays the opponents’ appeal on the table and reinterprets the rules.

The appeal process in this case is the filibuster for the nomination of Neil Gorsuch as a Supreme Court justice where the majority vote would replace the 60-vote supermajority required to stop a filibuster.

President Donald Trump recently encouraged Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, to employ the nuclear option to ensure that Gorsuch gets confirmed. McConnell, a career politician, has been in the Senate for almost thirty years and has reversed his position on plenty of issues in the past, similar to many others.

It is difficult to deny from an objective standpoint that both he and Gorsuch, however, are highly proficient in their field because of the amount of time they have spent in it.

Harry Reid changed the Senate rules by invoking the nuclear option in 2013 to pass through nominations to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit much to the dismay of many republicans. None of the appointees, however, were for the position of Supreme Court justice and the rule change did not apply to that level of the federal judicial branch.

Justice Antonin Scalia died almost a year ago and former president Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to fill the vacancy expired under McConnell’s refusal to hold a hearing, marking the longest pending nomination to the Supreme Court in history by more than twofold.

It was an expected political gambit, considering that Obama appointed two Supreme Court judges during his administration. Despite the questionable length of time, the nomination stagnated without a hearing as McConnell played the parliamentary game.

The legislative branch of the government will have far more incumbent Democrats than Republicans in the 2018 elections. Meanwhile, the ink has hardly dried on the nominations of cabinet members for Trump’s administration as far as the executive branch is concerned.

McConnell has already tried to usher hearings for the cabinet nominations despite current lamentations from the Government Ethics Office and his own push for ethical background examinations that he expressed in a letter to Reid in 2009. Basically, two of the branches of government aren’t looking like they’re going to lose Republican control for at least the next four years, and the judicial branch is pretty much split in half concerning partisan leanings.

Republicans, especially career politicians, should maintain the integrity of their party in the face of a president that many would consider an extremist. The Republican Party and all of its ideologies have the time and stability to rebuild its political sway on all levels of the government for the first time in years.

McConnell and Senate Republicans shouldn’t let something as important as the highest court of our nation and the appointment of the next life-tenured justice be subject to a caveat confirmation at the behest of President Trump.

The presidential office has a two term limit; Senators and House representatives may serve an unlimited number of terms. Therefore, only the legislative branch truly has the opportunity to have a long term approach in mind when it comes to this country like Supreme Court justices do. Do not invoke the nuclear option and open the floodgates for the laws of our land to be interpreted by anyone that a simple majority wants.

McConnell has waited for 294 days for Garland’s nomination to expire and has been in the game for over three decades. It is imperative that he does not act in haste. Let the process play out. He may not get Gorsuch but he’ll get his party’s judge soon enough. For the first time in a while, the ball is overwhelmingly in his court.

Opinion columnist Nicholas Bell is an MBA graduate student and can be reached at [email protected]

2 Comments

  • Harry Reid is a Dirty Old Man, and given the chance of approving a Supreme Court Justice under the Nuclear Option … well … he would not have hesitated one bit.

    Mitch McConnell is a man who needs encouragement to remind him he is a powerful man as the Senate Majority Leader, and Donald Trump is the man to provide such encouragement, by providing back support instead of letting his spine go limp again.

    Donald Trump is a man who scares the living daylights out of Progressives. He shoves it right back at the Democrats and the Leftists Media and asks for more, which is why I, and tens of millions of others support the man.

    Neil Gorsuch,is a upstanding man and judge. He reveres the Constitution, which really scares many Progressives, for they use social activist judges to do their bidding when the Democrats are not in power.

    To Progressives, the U.S.Constitution is just a lump of clay that they mold to fulfill any whim they might muster at the time. Abortion is law, not by a vote in Congress, but by a ruling of the SC. And I can see the increased possibility of a congressional vote on abortion in 2019 or 2020.

    There is evidence that Congressional Republicans are all growing backbones. Several Cabinet nominees have been passed out of committee, despite Democrats cowering in dark corners, refusing to show up for votes.

    The Committee Chairs said no more to Progressive stalling and, and took the votes without the cowards. Yesss!!!!

    And it is a fair assumption that Trump will get all of his cabinet nominees and Judge Gorsuch, despite the tricks that Democrats pull.

    The electorate is changing, which is why Milo Yiannopoulos is so dangerous to the current crop of young Progressives. Imagine, a gay man, Conservative, funny and persuasive, who loathes Political Correctness, and doesn’t shove his homosexuality in our faces demanding this or that right. In fact, he pokes fun at his black man loin loving self … and its selling. And I, and a lot of others … are buying. More millennials are seeing Democrat Approved Speech as a hindrance to the future growth of themselves, Milo makes sense as compared to the tripe of their Socialist Profs and college paper leftist columnists.

    Yes, Donald Trump who started handing out back-bones for Christmas, has re-written the GOP playbook to counter the old Democrat playbook. When Progressives calls their only play of racism … the Dem playbook says … “Republicans Cower Here.” And we did …

    … until Trump called a Triple Option, offering us a renewed sense of spirit and now we are plowing through to the Democrat secondary and on the way to the goal line.

    No longer do Republicans cower … they fight back. They’ll say “F* you, my name is Dave,” or F* Your Feelings,” as Milo might say. And viewing the videos he posts of Asians and Blacks talking about the insanity of SJWs, it also a given that Hispanics are following in suit as well, I saw that first hand over the weekend.

    The logic of the Conservative argument is sound, and we all know that Progressives cannot counter logically presented arguments before they result to name calling, after having exhausted all their talking points they have memorized. And if a Progressive has to memorize an argument … it wasn’t based in their hearts in the first place, and they will lose every time when challenged.

    Bell’s praising of McConnell is also a Democrat trick, just as any Socialist run newspaper may court a Justice by lauding them in the Style Section to sway them on an issue.

    I doubt Nicholas changed any minds today … least of all Mitch McConnell’s.

  • Ah, so NOW the Democrats want the Republicans to play fair. This essay reminds of an old saying: Be careful what you wish for. Harry Reid broke a system that served both parties well. It’s a little hypocritical to insist things go back to the way things were.

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