Majority Leader Schumer Detonates the 'Nuclear Option' to Ram Through Nominees; Both Parties Fetch Their Old Speeches From the Recycling

WASHINGTON — Majority Leader Schumer deployed the so-called nuclear option this year, changing the Senate's rules by simple majority to blast past the minority's blockade of the President's nominees, a maneuver that his party once described in end-of-days terms when the other side used it.

The nuclear option, more formally known as 'reform by ruling,' lets a bare majority rewrite the chamber's traditions whenever the traditions become inconvenient, which is to say whenever the majority changes. It has now been triggered by both parties, each of which delivered a solemn eulogy for the Senate as an institution immediately before using it and a triumphant defense of majority rule immediately after.

Supporters of the Leader called the move a necessary response to unprecedented obstruction. The minority called it a norm-shattering power grab that would haunt the body for a generation. The Press has confirmed that these two statements are kept in a shared drawer in the cloakroom and simply handed to whichever side is currently short of sixty votes.

Historians noted that the filibuster has been narrowed, expanded, mourned and celebrated by the same senators in the same careers, and that 'protecting the sanctity of the Senate' is the one bipartisan value that reliably switches sides on schedule.

Asked whether he feared the precedent when his party inevitably returns to the minority, the Leader said he was confident the rules would once again be sacred and inviolable at exactly that moment.