[Conscience of a Conservative]

Reid must know something. How else could he do this knowing that the Senate eventually will go back to the GOP?

I don't really buy this argument. Each Senate is not really restrained by what the previous Senate did. Regardless of whether Reid did this or not, a future GOP Senate could exercise the "nuclear option" (or choose not to do so), regardless of whether Reid did it. That may have been his thinking as well - he may have thought the GOP would have eventually done it, so why not pull the trigger now?

[Political Junkie Too]

I don't think the so-called nuclear option is a one-time thing. Senate rules are voted on at the beginning of each Congress. Usually, they adopt the package of rules in place from before.

Changing the rules mid-way through a session via a parliamentary interpretation is what just happened, which requires a majority vote to adopt. Otherwise, regular order would be necessary to change the rules.

Regardless of how we got there, these are the rules going forward, unless a future Senate votes to change the rules, following regular order, which allows for filibuster.

-PJ

[deport]

The nuclear option was discussed in 2005 by the GOP but didn’t come to be.

https://www.google.com/#q=2005+senate+nuclear+option