Parliamentary Procedure Nerd Alert

All this talk of “reconciliation”, up and down votes, majority rules- boys drool.. ok I added last one to see if you were paying attention.

This is important to stuff to understand, and will likely be the way the vote goes down after last Thursdays utter deadlock on any compromise. Please note, this procedure has been successfully used as a tactic for the Republicans-many a time. Although I heard a lot of whhhaaaaammmmmbulance calling since Friday about it being so unfair from our “friends” in the opposition. Meanwhile the Republican’s are setting some sort of filibuster record! Yay obstruction-just what the American people need more of!

Ezra Klein takes a look at reconciliation on his blog this morning, noting: “Reconciliation has, in general, been a Republican endeavor. Political scientist Joshua Tucker looked at the 19 times reconciliation was used between 1981 and 2005, and found that 14 of them were Republican initiatives. If you extend that analysis out to 2008, then 16 of 21 reconciliation bills were Republican.”

Seriously though, we haven’t gotten into the nerdy part yet- it’s in the clip below, which is worth six minutes of your time.

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How do you get this gig you ask? Well here you go, from our friends at CSPAN.

The Senate Parliamentarian serves at the pleasure of the Senate Majority Leader, and functions under the direction of the Secretary of the Senate as a non-partisan employee of the Senate. The House Parliamentarian serves with the consent of the Speaker of the House, also in a non-partisan capacity, advising Members of both parties. The complexity of the job requires years of apprenticeship, and the leaders of both chambers have respected the institutional experience necessary to perform the job well. Sitting Parliamentarians hire their own assistants, and for decades, those assistants have advanced to the position of Parliamentarian when a vacancy has occurred.

I hope you all caught the part about Vice President Biden really being the one to yield the big gavel, if you get my drift.

Said Dove: “The parliamentarian only can advise. It is the vice president who rules.

Good times people, good times.