Repeated abuse of the filibuster left Democrats with little choice.


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Democrats' decision Thursday to change Senate rules so they can confirm presidential nominees without Republican support is sure to worsen partisanship in a body that is already dangerously dysfunctional.
Republicans instantly promised to retaliate, and important national business — the current budget negotiations, for example, or attempts to head off another government shutdown — could suffer.
MITCH MCCONNELL: Democrats' power grab
Even so, the Senate's GOP minority brought the rules change, known as the "nuclear option," on itself. The Republicans' repeated abuse of the filibuster to block highly qualified nominees simply because they were picked by a Democratic president had left Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., with little choice.
When it comes to abusing the filibuster, particularly on judicial nominations, neither party has clean hands. Democrats did it during the George W. Bush administration, and in 2005 then-Sen. Barack Obama was among those denouncing the nuclear option. The two parties shamelessly swap arguments and tactics whenever the majority changes hands.
Little by little, they've eroded an honorable system in which each party acknowledged the president's constitutional right to make appointments, reserving filibusters only for extreme circumstances, where they have important value in encouraging bipartisanship.
This time, Republicans took the filibuster to new levels by making it destructively commonplace. In the past month alone, GOP senators have blocked Obama'snominee to head the Federal Housing Finance Agency, plus three well-qualified nominees to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
So now, as a result of Thursday's move, all of President Obama's nominees except those for the Supreme Court can be approved by a simple majority, rather than the 60 vote majority required to end a filibuster.
GOP senators' operatic outrage after Thursday's vote belied the fact that they provoked this outcome by refusing to work out the kind of deals that had defused previous confrontations. This year, Republicans twice backed down and agreed to curb their filibusters, and both times they reneged.
The last straw was their effort to prevent Obama from filling open seats on the D.C. Circuit Court, commonly regarded as the second most important court in the nation because it decides pivotal questions of government regulation and often serves as a stepping stone to the Supreme Court.
Republicans accused Obama of court-packing — an allusion to Franklin Roosevelt's attempt to expand a Supreme Court that was blocking the New Deal.
But that claim is ludicrous. Three seats are vacant. Republicans also say the court should be reduced in size because it is underworked. But if they were sincere, they could propose to shrink the court in the next presidency.
It's regrettable that cooler heads couldn't prevail. The Senate's paralysis could get worse in the short run, and when Democrats are back in the minority, which could happen after next year's elections, they'll no doubt regret detonating the nuclear option. All institutions need rules that everyone accepts.
But don't believe Republicans when they say this is all the fault of Democrats. If the filibuster is dying, it's because both parties have conspired to kill it.
USA TODAY's editorial opinions are decided by its Editorial Board, separate from the news staff.