What Is The Nuclear Option?

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The nuclear option | Flickr/Epic Fireworks (Creative Commons).The nuclear option | Flickr/Epic Fireworks (Creative Commons).“The nuclear option” is a term that was invented by Republican politicians in 2005 to describe their threat to change Senate rules to do away with filibusters of judicial nominees. But GOP media consultants soon decided the term was a political liability, and Republicans started to refer to it as a “smear” term created by Democrats. Then, as TPM reported at the time, Republicans “fann[ed] out to editorial rooms around Washington and New York, attempting to ban the phrase ‘nuclear option’ from print and airwave, unless it is duly noted as a Democrat-created smear phrase.”

Now, in 2010, Republicans are once again counting on short memories (the media’s and the public’s) to redefine the history of the “nuclear option” term. This time around, Republicans aren’t painting the term as a Democrat-created smear. They’re using it to describe a completely different maneuver than the one at issue in 2005.

Remember, the “nuclear option” originally described an effort to change Senate rules to prohibit filibusters of judicial nominees. Now, as MediaMatters has extensively documented, Fox News and the GOP are using it to describe the Democrats’ efforts to work within Senate rules to pass adjustments to the health care reform bill by majority vote. It’s all part of the GOP’s effort to delegitimize the filibuster-proof reconciliation process—the same majority-vote procedure that Republicans used to pass the budget-busting Bush tax cuts. It’s a bogus effort. Reconciliation was used 21 times between 1981 and 2008—16 of those times by Republicans.

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BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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