Radiating Changes

If there was one constant element of the national government we as citizens could point out rather easily, it would be the seemingly endless gamesmanship between the two national parties; the Republicans and the Democrats. When one party momentarily gains an edge over the other, the latter party retaliates in a fashion that sees a shift of power in their favor. A recent post by Jon Walker on the liberal political blog Firedoglake reiterates exactly that point.

In Walker's post, he describes Democratic reaction to the Republicans attempts to an appointment of any Obama supporter to the Circuit Court of Appeals by way of filibuster in the Senate. The Republican's goal in doing so was to maintain the conservative edge they had among the judges of that particular court. However, the Democrats broke up the filibuster using a political maneuver that the author refers to as the "nuclear option", which alters the voting process in terms of the Senate. Instead of requiring the usual 60 majority votes, the Democrats only needed the basic majority, which is this particular case was 52 votes. 

Jon Walker believes that this "nuking" of a filibuster signals a change forthcoming in how things are run when it comes to decision making votes and that the threat of obstruction has been greatly reduced. I however believe that this is just a temporary solution to a insolvable problem. As Walker himself alludes to, now that everyone has seen how the traditional filibuster can  be broken down, the opposing party of the next issue will now begin looking for new ways to halt the ideas and desires of their opponents. In contrast to Walker, I believe that things will soon return to status quo.