EDITORIAL: Tea gets too hot for Senate saucer

The saucer looks like it’s about to crack. And there’s a possibility that it will shatter altogether.

That symbolism of a saucer is what America’s first president, George Washington, is said to have used when describing to the eventual third president, Thomas Jefferson, who was out of the country when the Constitution was drafted, the Senate’s role in the grand scheme of the U.S. government.

Whether that conversation actually took place or the reference is simply apocryphal, the gist is that Washington saw the Senate as the place to “cool” legislation from the House of Representatives, just as many people at the time used a saucer to cool hot tea.

According to the Senate’s website, James Madison explained in letters to Jefferson, who he would succeed in the White House, that the framers of the Constitution viewed the Senate as a great “anchor” of the federal government, a legislative body that would serve as a “necessary fence” against the “fickleness and passion” that influenced — and in this day of wildfire social media, most certainly still does — the attitudes of the public in general, as well as House representatives.

It appears more and more certain that, after Democrats seriously chipped the saucer when they were in charge of the Senate in 2013, Republicans are about to crack it over the nomination of federal Judge Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In organizing itself, the Senate established rules that, over its existence, have sometimes been abused, but, for the most part, have served the body well. Requiring 60 votes on certain decisions, such as cabinet and judicial confirmations, has held the majority party in check in the Senate, requiring it to reach agreements with the minority party.

The problem is a certain amount of civility and ability to appreciate the wisdom of the tradition has disappeared from the U.S. Senate. Then-Vice President Richard Nixon, who was president of the Senate, gave an opinion in 1957 that a Senate rule — 60-vote majorities are a Senate rule, not a Constitutional requirement — could be deemed by the Senate presiding officer as a constitutional question, the determination of which would come from a simple majority vote of the Senate. Called the “nuclear option,” former Senator Harry Reid employed it on all executive branch and judicial nominations in 2013 when Republicans refused to confirm appointments by President Obama.

On Thursday, the Senate is scheduled to take a cloture vote on ending debate on the nomination. If Republicans can’t muster 60 votes to invoke cloture, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is expected to change the rule to a simple majority vote.

Once the concept was enacted to the degree of confirming executive appointments and federal judges, it was only a matter of time before Supreme Court justices would be included. The paralyzing ideological divide between Republicans and Democrats has gotten so wide and so deep, and the stakes of getting the “correct” thinking judge on the high court has gotten so critical to them, that doing away with the ability to filibuster a nomination seems inevitable.

What also may be inevitable is that the filibuster will be done away with for good. If it’s not needed for Supreme Court nominations, who’s to say it’s still needed on legislation? That has to be an enticing apple for Republicans to pluck, simply because of the difficulty of reversing a law once its enacted. Look at the Affordable Care Act. With Republicans in charge of both houses of Congress and the White House, they’ve been unable to get rid of the legislation that they have fought for seven years. On the other hand, getting rid of executive orders has taken just the stroke of President Trump’s pen. And if Republicans don’t pull the plug on the dying patient known as the filibuster, Democrats will find a reason to sooner or later once they become the majority again.

The Senate was designed to be a place where cooler heads would prevail. That has not been the case for a number of years now. The result is a perfectly functional, irreplaceable saucer is going to be irreparably shattered by short-sighted senators on both sides of the aisle who have taken a regrettable liking to tea that is far too hot with passion and fickleness for anyone’s own good.