As you’ve probably heard, Republican pols are now charging that Democrats devised both the term and the strategy of the term, “nuclear option,” in relation to the U.S. Senate filibuster controversy. They say the Democrats invented the phrase to describe their destructive plan to shut down Senate business if they don’t get their way. The words “nuclear option” have, let us say, an uneasy connotation that no political party would want to be associated with.
It is just as probable that you won’t be surprised to learn that the Republicans are fibbing again.
A Lexis-Nexis search revealed this -- the first reference to the term that offered any attribution:
Senate Republicans have one weapon -- what Majority Leader Bill Frist and his colleagues have called the "nuclear option," because it would blow up the current rules requiring a 60-vote “supermajority” to end a filibuster.
The line is from the Washington Post, November 28, 2004.
Aha! some would say. Just a liberal-media rag wanting to punish the GOP.
Aha! I would say. The line was written by Norman Ornstein, American Enterprise Institute.
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