Senate Republicans found a sympathetic ear at The New York Times to help them justify messing with Senate rules again to get popular vote loser Donald Trump's nominees through the confirmation process.
Frustrated over Democrats slow-walking many executive and judicial branch nominees and chewing up Senate floor time in the bargain, Republicans moved on Wednesday toward shortening stringent time requirements that can turn even a routine confirmation into a C-Span-numbing, multiday slog. […]
Opening a new front, members of the Rules Committee approved in a party-line vote on Wednesday a change that would, in the words of Senator Roy Blunt, the Missouri Republican who leads the panel, “streamline” the somewhat convoluted process. The plan would cut the required debate time to eight hours from 30 for noncabinet-level executive branch nominees and to two hours for Federal District Court judges. The requirement would remain at 30 hours for cabinet nominees and those put forward for spots on the Supreme Court and federal appeals courts, but the change could free up considerable time.
Republicans say that Democrats, by requiring Republicans to jump through all of the procedural hoops in scores of instances this year even when many Democrats ended up backing the nominees, are simply trying to tie up the Senate to thwart Republicans and Mr. Trump.
“It is sort of pointless wasting time, even when we know what the outcome is going to be,” said Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader.
Two words for McConnell, and the Times: Merrick Garland.
Of course, the Times' Carl Hulse does bring that up, saying there would be "tremendous pressure from liberal advocacy groups and constituents to stall Trump picks as payback for Republican stonewalling in 2016 of the Supreme Court nomination of Merrick B. Garland by President Barack Obama as well as their deep discontent with the quality and ideology of many nominees from this White House so far." Payback. Or an attempt to preserve a competent and fair judicial branch and restore some sort of normalcy to the legislative. If anything, Democrats will go out of their way to not exact political payback. Because Democrats are really not good at doing that.
Because if Democrats were really inclined to obstruct, they could be doing a much better job of tying the floor into knots. The real point of all this is jamming through as many of Trump's deplorables as possible before the election, just in case Democrats do take the Senate over.