Senate Filibuster Rule Change: Obama, Biden, Reid Were Against ‘Nuclear Option’ Before They Were For It [Video]

When it came to the filibuster rule, Barack Obama and his colleagues were once very concerned about protecting minority rights in the US Senate… when George W. Bush was in the White House.

It turns out that “if you like your filibuster rule, you can can keep it,” as it were, didn’t hold true either.

Yesterday, the Democrats under Sen. Harry Reid exercised the so-called nuclear option on filibusters of presidential appointees. “The action fundamentally altered the way Congress’ upper chamber has worked since the mid-19th century by making it impossible for a minority party, on its own, to block presidential appointments, except those to the U.S. Supreme Court. On a nearly party-line vote of 52-48, the Senate reduced from 60 to 51 the number of votes needed to end procedural roadblocks.”

When Senate Democrats were blocking many of President George W. Bush’s judicial picks, including attorney Miguel Estrada, Republicans flirted with the idea of changing the long-standing legislative filibuster rule. But they ultimately left the rule alone, even though it later turned out that many GOP nominees never got an up-or-down vote.

As National Review Online points out, “The most egregious case was that of Miguel Estrada, whose life story was pure American dream. First nominated by President Bush in May 2001, Estrada finally withdrew his name from further consideration some 27 months later, after seven failed cloture votes in the next, 108th Congress.”

With the rule change made yesterday, Executive Branch and lifetime federal court nominees can now be confirmed by only 51 votes. Under previous Senate precedent, a nomination had to get 60 votes as threshold for “cloture” to end debate before a final vote could go forward. President Obama thought what Reid and company did was great : “At the White House, President Obama welcomed the change. As a senator, he regularly participated in filibusters, including when Democrats pioneered the blockade of judicial nominees under President George W. Bush.”

According to the Washington Times, “until the most recent push to put judges on the D.C. appeals court, Republicans had helped confirm 215 [Obama-nominated] judges and filibustered just two.”

The New York Times suggests that this procedural change could backfire on the Democrats and actually make Senate gridlock worse:

“President Obama will get a short-term lift for his nominees, judicial and otherwise, but over the immediate horizon, the strong-arm move by Senate Democrats on Thursday to limit filibusters could usher in an era of rank partisan warfare beyond even what Americans have seen in the past five years… The rule change lowered to a simple 51-vote majority the threshold to clear procedural hurdles on the way to the confirmation of judges and executive nominees. But it did nothing to streamline the gantlet that presidential nominees run. Republicans may not be able to muster the votes to block Democrats on procedure, but they can force every nomination into days of debate between every procedural vote in the Senate book — of which there will be many.”

Similarly, the Washington Post opined that there has been more cross-party cooperation in the Senate (unlike the House of Representatives) because “until Thursday, Senate rules required the majority party to win votes from the minority… But Reid’s remedy — calling a simple-majority vote to undo more than two centuries of custom — has created a situation in which the minority leader, Mitch McConnell (Ky.), is expected to use the minority’s remaining powers to gum up the works, and to get revenge when Republicans regain the majority. If it was possible to make things even worse in Washington, Reid just did it.”

In 2005, then-Sen. Barack Obama was dead set against GOP threats to weaken the filibuster rule with the nuclear option:

“What [the American people] don’t expect is that one party, be it Republican or Democrat, to change the rules in the middle of the game so they can make all the decisions while the other party is told to sit down and keep quiet. The American people want less partisanship in this town, but everyone in this chamber knows that if the majority chooses to end the filibuster, if they choose to change the rules and put an end to the democratic debate, then the fighting, bitterness, and gridlock will only get worse. I understand the Republicans are getting a lot of pressure to do this from factions outside the chamber, but we need to rise above the ends justify the means mentality because we’re here to answer to the people, not just the ones that are wearing our particular party label… If the right of free and open debate is taken away from the minority party, and the millions of Americans who ask us to be their voice, I fear the already partisan atmosphere in Washington will be poisoned to the point where no one will be to agree on anything. That doesn’t serve anyone’s best interest, and it certainly wasn’t what the patriots who founded this democracy had in mind.”

Then-Sen. Joe Biden, who the former chairman of the Judiciary Committee that vetted (which is a charitable way to describe it) court nominees, also aggressively opposed changing the filibuster rule via the nuclear option during the Bush administration when the GOP held the majority. He particularly insisted that changing any of the Senate’s rules with a simple majority was not “parliamentary appropriate” given the practice in place for over 200 years. Said Biden:

“Getting rid of the filibuster has long-term consequences. There’s one thing I’ve learned in my years here. Once you change the rules and surrender the Senate’s institutional power, you never get it back. And we’re about to break the rules to change the rules. I don’t want to hear about fair play from my friends. Under our rules, you’re required to get a two-thirds vote… I mean 60 votes to change the rules… you can not change the Senate rules by a pure majority vote... This is what’s really going on here, the majority doesn’t want to hear what others have to say even if it’s the truth… The nuclear option abandons America’s sense of fair play…I say to my friends on the Republican side, you may own the field right now, but you won’t own it forever. I pray God, when the Democrats take back control, we don’t make the kind of naked power grab you are doing… “

Sen. Harry Reid — the current majority leader — himself previously claimed that “the right to extended debate is never more important than when one party controls Congress and the White House. And in these cases the filibuster serves as a check on power and preserves limited government. ” Reid also declared that “The threat to change Senate rules is a raw abuse of power and will destroy the very checks and balances our founding fathers put in place to prevent absolute power by any one branch of government.”

Then-Sen Hillary Clinton also spoke out against the use of the nuclear option to end Senate filibusters when the GOP was in control of the chamber.

NBC Correspondent Chuck Todd claimed yesterday that the nuclear option was Reid’s way to make the Democrats’ activist base feel better about themselves in the wake of the Obamacare implementation. “They were “feeling a little bit… under attack and under siege a little bit because of how poorly the health care rollout is going.”

Given all that came before, do you think that Harry Reid’s “detonation” of the nuclear option to end Senate filibusters is or isn’t an example of hypocrisy or just politics as usual?