Today the senate just became another House of Representatives. From this day forward any party who has the majority in the senate now is free to dispense with a filibuster with only 51 votes. The Precedence has been set. The idea or American ideal as John Adams put it, that we are “A nation of laws and not of man,” is gone. Anytime any party with a simple majority can change the rules and the law that had applied to suit themselves or the man, the nation of law and rules is gone. The rule of man has superseded the rule of law.
If anyone thinks this will stop here, it won’t. Both parties are now free to change rules that protected the minority party to suit the majority; tyranny of the majority is at hand. When one party controls both chambers of congress and the president, it is now free to repeal any and all laws that have been passed by their opposition party when they were in power; there is nothing now to stop them. No checks or balances on absolute power of a simple majority and that party can pass and enact any legislation it wants as long as it controls both chambers of congress and the presidency. If the Republicans were to gain back the senate, keep control of the house and win the presidency in 2016, I wouldn’t be surprised if they used this Senator Harry Reid Precedence to repeal Obamacare, to cut taxes on the rich, perhaps abolish the corporate tax, privatize social security, abolish the EPA, the labor board, and I could go on and on. All they have to do is use the precedence set today by Harry Reid as he abolished the rights of the minority.