Changed Senate rule eases way for Holder successor

Last November, Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid changed Senate rules so that nominations for Cabinet positions and most judicial posts needed only 51 votes, instead of the 60 that had been required.

That means the person President Obama nominates to succeed Attorney General Eric Holder will not face a potential Republican filibuster.

Lawmakers plan to return Nov. 12, and no matter who prevails in the Nov. 4 elections, Democrats will remain in the Senate majority until the end of the year.

Democrats control 55 votes, while Republicans make up 45 of the chamber’s lawmakers.

Under the old Senate rules, Obama might have had a difficult time getting the Senate to approve a new attorney general. That’s because executive nominations were once required to clear a 60-vote threshold in the Senate, which meant Republicans might have been able to block a candidate to succeed Holder that they opposed.

But the old rules no longer apply.

In November 2013, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., citing a pattern of Republicans blocking nominations, altered the Senate rules so that most judicial and executive branch nominees need only a majority of Senate support to win confirmation.

Senators referred to the move as “the nuclear option,” and Democrats saw it as an opportunity to clear as many of Obama’s judicial and executive branch nominees as possible in the face of a looming threat of a GOP takeover of the Senate majority in 2015.

Obama’s candidate to succeed Holder could be the final and most important nominee to benefit from this rules change if Democrats indeed lose the Senate in November.

“We should have confirmation hearings as quickly as possible in the Senate,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who would oversee the process, said Thursday on CNN.

Reid said, “It is my hope that my Republican colleagues will work with Senate Democrats to give swift and fair consideration to President Obama’s next nominee for this important position.”

Senate Republicans will be eager to weigh in on the next attorney general as well.

Many GOP lawmakers were highly critical of Holder’s six-year tenure at Justice, accusing him of being a divisive attorney general who put his liberal politics ahead of the law.

The top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said Congress should wait until January to consider a replacement.

Grassley said he voted to confirm Holder and regrets the decision because Holder, he said, lacked respect for Congress.

“Rather than rush a nominee through the Senate in a lame duck session,” Grassley said. “hope the President will now take his time to nominate a qualified individual who can start fresh relationships with Congress so that we can solve the problems facing our country.”

House lawmakers, meanwhile, celebrated Holder’s announcement and called on Obama to select a candidate they would view as less partisan.

“While President Obama and the Senate should work expeditiously to find a replacement, time and care must be taken to ensure that our next Attorney General recognizes and does not repeat Mr. Holder’s mistakes,” House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who often clashed with Holder at hearings, said.

Democrats, meanwhile, showered praise on Holder, who bolstered the Justice Department’s civil rights division and promoted policies aimed at ensuring equality for minorities and the LGBT community, as well as expanding voting rights.

“Over the past six years, Attorney General Holder has worked to improve our nation’s broken justice system, enforce civil rights laws, ban racial profiling, rekindle trust between law enforcement and communities of color, restructure sentencing guidelines, and identify constructive alternatives to incarceration,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on House Oversight. “In the process, he has improved how our courts and law enforcement officers do their jobs.”