YEAH, BUT THEN HE HAD A MAJORITY:

The Byrd Option: The former Senate leader knew how to break a filibuster. (Opinion Journal, March 7, 2005)

Changing Senate precedents by majority vote would be nothing new to Mr. Byrd, who used the tactic to change Senate precedents on filibusters and other delaying tactics when he was Majority Leader in 1977, 1979, 1980 and 1987. This history is detailed by Martin Gold and Dimple Gupta in the current issue of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy.

The example most closely analogous occurred in March 1980, when Mr. Byrd mounted a charge to eliminate the possibility of a double filibuster--first on a motion to proceed to a nomination and then on a nomination itself. He wanted to push through the confirmation of Robert White as ambassador to El Salvador and, as Mr. Gold and Ms. Gupta explain, "this well established procedure presented potential difficulties."

And so Mr. Byrd moved to get rid of the first filibuster opportunity--debate on motions to proceed to nominations. GOP Senator Jesse Helms objected and the presiding officer ruled in Mr. Helms's favor. Mr. Byrd appealed, and the Senate voted 54-38 to overturn the chair. The rule change went into effect.

Also closely analogous to today is Mr. Byrd's threat a year earlier to deploy the nuclear option if a change he had proposed to Rule XXII was filibustered. "I want to change the rules in an orderly fashion . . ." he said. But, "if I have to be forced into a corner to try for a majority vote, I will do it because I am going to do my duty as I see my duty." In the end, the threat of going nuclear was enough to break the opposition.

And no one called him a Nazi?

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 7, 2005 10:36 AM