GOP taking wait-and-see approach for rule change

As Republicans took control of the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, they grew increasingly comfortable with keeping the rule change known as the “nuclear option” that Democrats imposed to end filibusters of nominations and confirm President Obama’s picks.

Republicans had railed against the rule change when it was done by then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, calling it a “power grab” that blew up the chamber’s 200-year tradition of empowering the minority party.

With their hand on the helm of the Senate, however, Republicans suddenly found it difficult to reverse course.

“We’ll sort of stay in a holding pattern,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said shortly after she was sworn in as the new junior senator from West Virginia.

Mrs. Capito, who attended a recent conference meeting where changing the rule was debated, said she didn’t know if it would ever become a top priority or “if we’ll just learn to live with it.”

The rule change dramatically shifted power in the Senate by reducing the number of votes needed to end a filibuster from 60 to 51. This basically eliminated the minority’s sway over nominations and all but assured that a president whose party holds the Senate majority would get nominees easily confirmed.

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, the chamber’s most senior Republican and new president pro tempore of the Senate, has emerged as the most outspoken advocate of keeping the rule.

“I’m not so sure it’s a bad thing I can live with the current rules,” Mr. Hatch said.

With an eye on the 2016 presidential election and the possibility of easily confirming Republican nominees, he argued that his party shouldn’t unilaterally disarm by undoing the rule that already benefited Mr. Obama.

“We’ve got an excellent chance of winning that election,” he said.

Mr. Hatch’s arguments have resonated with Senate Republicans, who also insist that Democrats can’t be trusted not to go nuclear again if they win back majority control of the chamber.

The process for undoing the nuclear option also has proved complicated. With the Republican conference divided on the issue, and Democrats loath to reverse it, GOP leaders say they don’t have the 51 votes needed to restore the old rule.

What’s more, the Republican fear that Democrats could go nuclear again has spurred proposals for a more permanent fix, making the 60-vote requirement to break a filibuster a matter of formal Senate rules rather than the mere custom it had been.

But changing the Senate’s actual rules to bar the majority’s “nuclear option” would itself require an even larger supermajority of 67 votes. And according to a GOP aide familiar with the internal debate, the votes to do that simply aren’t there.

Regardless of the difficulties or the political drawbacks, a large faction of Republican senators supports returning to a pre-nuclear confirmation process.

“What was done last year was totally contrary to the proud heritage of the Senate. So my vote will be to go back to the traditional rules, despite the fact that Democrats never should have done it,” said Sen. Susan M. Collins, Maine Republican. “I think we should avoid the urge to retaliate and seek revenge, and instead do what is right and take the high road.”

Senate Minority Whip Richard J. Durbin, an Illinois Democrat who also was the No. 2 Democratic leader when Mr. Reid used the nuclear option, defended the move as a last resort to overcome Republican obstructionism.

“We went to the new rules change out of desperation,” he said. “It was pretty clear there was a conscious strategy to stop Obama from making federal judicial appointments. We felt that we had no recourse, and that’s why we changed the rule.”

Mr. Durbin said that he was waiting to see how the new GOP majority would handle nominations since it controls the committee process and could stymie nominees without using a filibuster.

“Now the question is what will be the regular order under the new majority leader when it comes to nominations. We don’t know as I stand here,” he said.