Follow up to yesterday's post: Key move by Thune

I didn’t get into one nuance of the filibuster that pertains to nominations in the last post. To simplify, the practice of taking each nomination one at a time, even for lower level positions in the administration, enables the minority party to slow things down a great deal even with the requirement for passage for nominees a simple majority instead of 60. There are a lot of slots to fill and time is a precious commodity in the Senate. This delaying tactic is exactly what Democrats are currently employing for many of Trump’s lower level nominations.

Well, as reported in the New York Times, we may be seeing another key move in the direction of expediting procedure in the Senate with steps initiated yesterday by the Majority Leader, John Thune.

As noted in the previous post, senators love the procedural hurdles available to them. It provides opportunities for negotiation, including for slow-walking administration nominations. Thune’s move may eliminate one more of these.

Republicans accuse Democrats of preventing the administration from being sufficiently staffed and able to run agencies. The idea being that presidents should be entitled, within reason, to have their people in leadership positions. Of course we’ve heard exactly this argument before, made by Democrats when they ended the 60-vote requirement for nominations back in 2013 when Barack Obama was president.