The Democrats responded with norm breaking of their own. In November 2013, Senate Democrats voted to eliminate the filibuster for most presidential nominations, including federal judicial (but not Supreme Court) nominees, a move so extreme it was widely referred to as the “nuclear option.” Republican senators criticized the Democrats’ “raw exercise of political power,” but President Obama defended it, claiming that the filibuster had been transformed into a “reckless and relentless tool” of obstruction and adding that “today’s pattern of obstruction…just isn’t normal; it’s not what our
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