"..........................Reid had a plan from the start. Once Republican leaders in the House were done colluding with President Obama and the Democrats to pass the “cromnibus” spending bill — the one that forfeits Congress’s power to block funding for Obamacare and other noxious Obama initiatives for the next year — Reid would team up with GOP Senate leaders equally anxious to get the cromnibus enacted. The majority leader, however, would keep in his back pocket the “tax-extenders” legislation — a grab-bag of Washington special-interest tax breaks — knowing Beltway Republicans, like Democrats, would want to make sure their sponsors were taken care of. By holding the tax extenders until the very end, Reid could rest assured that senators looking to flee the capital for the holidays would make no trouble while Democrats used the new no-filibuster procedure to blow through the stack of Obama nominees.
The fact of the matter is: The Cruz/Lee point of order on the unconstitutionality of Obama’s amnesty had nothing to do with getting Obama’s nominees confirmed. There was nothing Reid did in moving the nominations forward last weekend that he could not and would not have done to achieve the same objective starting Monday — nothing other than giving his GOP partners in the amnesty project a few strands to weave into a yarn blaming Cruz and Lee for confirming Obama’s nominees, a useful distraction of public attention from the Republican capitulation to Obama’s lawlessness.
If Republicans were serious about stopping the president’s nominees and his systematic non-enforcement of the immigration laws, there would be an easy way to show it. A month ago, Senator Cruz called on Senator McConnell to announce that the Senate will not confirm Obama’s nominees “unless and until the president ends this lawless amnesty.” The soon-to-be majority leader’s response? Crickets.
If, as they claimed, Beltway Republicans really wanted to stop Reid’s rubber-stamping of Obama nominees this week, McConnell could have dramatically one-upped Cruz’s proposal. He could have publicly warned that if the majority leader steamrolled the minority this way, Democrats should expect to get nothing for the next two years — no nominees and none of the accommodations the majority typically accords the minority in the many uncontroversial matters lawmakers deal with. You negotiate by exploiting your leverage, not by relying on the good graces of Harry Reid. Republicans, instead, accommodate Democrats, saving their hardball tactics for use against conservatives who try to force fights GOP leaders have no interest in waging."