The fellas of the @RuthlessPodcast correctly predicted on their Monday, Sept. 1, program that a "Schumer shutdown" is coming this fall. Senate Democrat Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has to pretend to matter to his party’s base, so he will force a shutdown. One of two things the Senate GOP must do this month is underscore that the coming government shutdown is a "Schumer shutdown." Ds must be made to own it.  

But the fellas, for all their gifts, which are many, did not emphasize enough the enormous risk the GOP Senate majority will take if the GOP conference doesn’t force a change to the Senate rules. That would clear the enormous backlog of President Donald Trump’s nominees to executive branch positions, which have cleared their committee process.  

Many senators are on record demanding the "Reid precedent" be invoked to change the Senate’s rules regarding nominees. Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso outlined the unprecedented obstruction of routine nominees in a Wall Street Journal column on August 26. "For decades, noncontroversial nominees moved through the Senate in a timely manner," the Wyoming Republican noted. "Democrats destroyed this tradition by treating every Trump nominee as controversial." 

TOP SENATE REPUBLICAN READY TO 'ROLL OVER' DEMOCRATS WITH RULE CHANGE TO CONFIRM TRUMP NOMINEES

"The American people elected President Trump and Republicans with a directive to get the U.S. back on track," Barrasso concluded. "They didn’t vote for Democratic delay and obstruction." 

What Barrasso made clear is that the Senate GOP can blow up the blockade and intends to. In his column, he echoed the hard-nosed positions taken by many Senate Republicans. Good. Delay in making the rule changes imperils the Senate majority next November. This is the time to end this absurd exercise in theater politics.  

It is time to make every nominee who clears his or her committee of jurisdiction subject to immediate confirmation vote by the Senate. That requires a change in the Senate’s rules. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid established the precedent for such changes. Frustrated by Republican delay on the confirmation of judges during President Barack Obama’s tenure — the GOP used the playbook Democrats followed during President George W. Bush’s tenure in blocking very qualified nominees — Reid first threatened to change the Senate rules via a simple majority vote.  

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Reid went through with his threat to change the Senate confirmation rules. This display of ruthless politics came after then-Majority Leader Senator Bill Frist faltered with his threat to do the same. That was when the "Gang of 14" undercut Frist in May 2005, after the Tennessee senator had pledged his conference to the "nuclear option" to move judicial nominees forward. It was the threat that Reid would actually later make and follow through on in November 2013.  

Reid moved ahead despite then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell warning Reid that the GOP would use the Reid precedent down the line. When McConnell became Senate majority leader, he invoked the Reid precedent to expand Reid’s rule to cover SCOTUS nominees. It was a move of strength from McConnell, as was his no-hearings, no-votes stance following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016. The GOP faithful knew that the "Grim Reaper" did not make idle threats. McConnell knew that a threat made must be a promise remembered.  

Now the Senate GOP has to flex again and follow through with its threat to use the Reid precedent for the rules for nominees, again. Failure to do so and do so quickly will damage the chances of the GOP holding on to its majority in November 2026. The GOP’s voters are not "institutionalists," after watching the four years of the Biden presidency break every norm, especially with regard to lawfare following the obstruction of Trump from within the executive branch in his first term.  

The days of, "We’ve always done it this way with nominees" are long gone and Majority Leader John Thune gave Schumer every chance to change his ways. Schumer rejected every offer of compromise.  

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Presidents deserve their executive branch appointees. The Constitution is presumed to provide a quick way to put nominees to an up-or-down vote in the Senate.  

The Constitution is clear on this. Article II, section 2 of the United States Constitution provides that the president "shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the Supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for."  

The Senate is supposed to vote on a president’s nominees and, while the Senate committee process should be respected as critical to vetting those nominees, once a nominee has cleared their committee, a vote should follow almost immediately. The Senate’s arcane rules on nominees, which did not foresee a blockade like Schumer’s, must thus be changed.  

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Even as the Senate GOP girds its collective loins for the Schumer shutdown media battle, they need the GOP base and indeed even occasional voters to understand that it is behind POTUS, and a litmus test of that support lies with the rules change for nominees, a change imposed via the Reid precedent. 

It would also be useful to put a vote on the legislative filibuster on the floor at the same time and a new rule on "blue slips," which have been abused for decades to keep some states free of serious trial judges nominated by Trump.  

The GOP should defend the long-standing "rule of 60" for legislative change, but the Republican senators can use the occasion of a rule change vote to demonstrate Senate Democrats’ hypocrisy on the issue by putting an end to the filibuster up for a vote too. It is also time to debate killing the "blue slip" for district court nominees, or coastal America may never get another serious federal trial court judge.  

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The last two suggestions are not mandatory for the Senate GOP to keep faith with its electorate, though they would drive home the message that this is not your father’s Senate GOP. The rule change on nominees is necessary. It has been promised. It should be voted on this week or next.  

The president cannot implement his defense, national security and foreign policy plans — areas largely reserved to the president — without his nominees who have cleared committee in the first place.  

Be prepared to live with the change under Democratic presidents and majorities. That’s the test, because what goes around, comes around. This rule change via the Reid precedent makes constitutional sense, and it is a practical, political imperative. Get on with it, Senate GOP. If there are naysayers in the conference, they ought to be obliged to record their position with a floor roll call and defend it in their next election. 

Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor, and host of "The Hugh Hewitt Show," heard weekdays from 3 pm to 6 pm ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh drives America home on the East Coast and to lunch on the West Coast on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.