Unless the GOP figures out a way to change state borders, it's going to be impossible for them to keep the Senate through gerrymandering. Two senators per state....
Politico (yes, I know, because it's not FOX News or some other site that's blatantly pro-Trump or pro-Republican, it's FAKE NEWS and "librul media LOL"..... sigh. Give it a rest already....) has two very good and insightful essays on what "going nuclear" means in the grand scheme of things.
"RIP U.S. Senate, 1789-2017" by Matt Latimer:
"Let’s be clear: The so-called nuclear option being seriously contemplated by Republican leaders to eliminate the filibuster of Supreme Court nominations is a tactic of last resort, forced on them in a final acknowledgment that the Senate as we’d known it for decades, and as the founders envisioned it, is dead."
"Lastly, and in what is perhaps the cruelest insult to members of the “upper chamber,” the end of the filibuster would transform the Senate into simply a slightly more gilded version of the House. The Senate was envisioned as the more reasonable of the two chambers, where compromise and conciliation would be the order of the day. Because senators reflect a larger composition of their respective states and have longer terms of office, the idea was that there would be less of a need to engage in petty politics or respond to the whims of constituencies."
"When I first came to Washington, I worked as an aide in both chambers. There was no doubt where most staffers preferred to be."
"We’d hear Robert Byrd offer his long and famous soliloquies on the Constitution and even stop to listen sometimes. On occasion, you’d even see people like Hillary Clinton or Dianne Feinstein or Ted Kennedy working on legislation with conservatives like Jon Kyl or Orrin Hatch. Even pitched battles on the floor of the Senate or in the media between senators of different parties often came with a little knowing glance or a shrug. As if to say, “Yeah, we have to do this, but we’ll find a way to strike a deal.” "
"If the Senate proves no more workable than the House, if it now indulges in similar games of brinkmanship and silly antics to appeal to its base, what, pray tell, do we need the Senate for at all?"
"How Congress Used to Work" by Bruce Bartlett:
"Historically, major legislative initiatives were all multiyear exercises—Social Security, Medicare, welfare reform et al.—and that doesn’t even count the many years before the legislative process began, in which scholars and other policy entrepreneurs plowed the ground to get to the point where legislation was feasible."
"This sort of traditional legislating came to an end in 1994 when Republicans got control of both the House and Senate for the first time since 1954. Republicans elected Newt Gingrich as speaker of the House and most believed that they owed him personally for having devised the strategy that led them to this unexpected outcome. After spending so long in the minority, Republicans had a large, pent-up demand for things they wanted to do as soon as they got control. But Gingrich had his own ideas. Chief among them was the dismantling of the traditional legislating process based on the committees. He was in too much of a hurry for hearings and markups on the things he wanted to do. Nor did he have any interest in being challenged by a bunch of “experts” telling him that his ideas wouldn’t work."
"During the Obama years, Republicans made no effort whatsoever to pass any of their initiatives. That would have required meeting some of the president’s demands, which were assumed to be unacceptable, regardless of what they were. All Republican legislative efforts went into one thing: stopping whatever Obama wanted to do, no matter the merit or the possibility they could get something for themselves with a small amount of compromise. To the GOP base, compromise equaled capitulation and therefore was forbidden."
"The problem is that the legislative machinery has atrophied from lack of use for so many years on the Republican side. Republicans have forgotten how to properly draft a bill, vet it, built coalitions, make deals and put a major piece of legislation across the finish line. The president can’t help because he knows nothing whatsoever about the legislative process, not to mention the larger policymaking process that includes lobbyists, trade associations, citizen groups, think tanks and the news media."
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The whole point is that the Senate is supposed to be the Grand Deliberative Body that takes the time to work for a nationally acceptable compromise that will last. That's why they have staggered six-year terms, while the House gets churned up every two years. When you are giving someone a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the country, shouldn't that call for exactly that sort of collective judgment and consensus-building that was originally intended? If your candidate for that most serious of positions cannot earn the acceptance of two-thirds of the Senate - and therefore two-thirds of the states - shouldn't you try to find a better candidate instead of changing the rules?