{"id":3610,"date":"2005-02-24T12:10:55","date_gmt":"2005-02-24T17:10:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/3610.html"},"modified":"2005-02-24T12:10:55","modified_gmt":"2005-02-24T17:10:55","slug":"lets-say-specter-is-leaning-against-the-nuclear-option","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/lets-say-specter-is-leaning-against-the-nuclear-option\/","title":{"rendered":"Let&#8217;s say Specter is &#8216;leaning against&#8217; the nuclear option"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When counting heads on which Republican senators would be willing to join Dems in opposing the &#8220;nuclear option,&#8221; Arlen Specter has been, at a minimum, leaning the right way. The Pennsylvanian <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtontimes.com\/national\/20050208-121832-2445r.htm\">told the Washington Times<\/a> two weeks ago, for example, that he was wary of the change, but was non-committal about how he&#8217;d ultimately vote if the issue came to the floor.<\/p>\n<p>This week, Specter&#8217;s feelings seemed <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/articles\/A48686-2005Feb23.html\">a little less ambiguous<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Changing the Senate rules to prohibit filibusters of judicial nominees &#8212; the &#8220;nuclear option&#8221; &#8212; could have deleterious short-term effects and run the long-term risk of eroding the rights of the minority. &#8220;If we go to the nuclear option &#8230; the Senate will be in turmoil and the Judiciary Committee will be hell.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Specter even disagreed with the idea that filibustering a judicial nominee is unconstitutional &#8212; a claim popular with Frist &#038; Co. these days.<\/p>\n<p>Not including Specter, five Republican senators &#8212; McCain, Hagel, Chafee, Snowe, and Collins &#8212; have indicated that they won&#8217;t support the &#8220;nuclear option.&#8221; Adding Specter to the mix makes six. With a 55-45 majority, six is the number at which the Republican majority sees the option fail.<\/p>\n<p>Frist is bluffing; he doesn&#8217;t have the votes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When counting heads on which Republican senators would be willing to join Dems in opposing the &#8220;nuclear option,&#8221; Arlen Specter has been, at a minimum, leaning the right way. The Pennsylvanian told the Washington Times two weeks ago, for example, that he was wary of the change, but was non-committal about how he&#8217;d ultimately vote [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3610\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}