Fillibuster showdown set. On Monday night, the full Senate will meet in the Old Senate Chamber in a final effort to avoid the so-called nuclear option on filibusters. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday that the rule change, which would require only 51 votes to break a filibuster instead of the current 60 needed, was a necessary change to “give President Barack Obama executive branch officials whom he wanted to carry out his agenda,” NBC News reports. “Whoever is president should be able to have the people on their team that they want,” said Reid. Later on the program, Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell accused Reid of “breaking the rules of the Senate in order to change the rules of the Senate.”
The Washington Post delves into the increasingly bitter relationship between the two party leaders, finding that the once genteel body has devolved into nothing but ongoing, partisan fights: “The U.S. Senate, once considered the most exclusive and chummiest club in America, has in recent years been transformed into an ideological war zone, where comity and compromise have lost their allure, while confrontation and showmanship now pay big dividends.”
Abbott’s in. “Already well-known in political circles and extremely well-financed, Attorney General Greg Abbott formally announced Sunday he’s running for governor, hoping to seize the fiercely socially conservative mantle of Gov. Rick Perry that has helped make Texas the country’s largest red state,” the Houston Chronicle reports. ” The campaign kickoff in downtown San Antonio came 29 years to the day after a freak accident left Abbott partially paralyzed. Still, the announcement was no surprise. The state’s top cop since December 2002, Abbott has more than $22.7 million for his war chest and hasn’t hidden his ambition to live in the governor’s mansion.”
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