"... GOP officials have an incentive to leave Americans with the impression that Republicans won’t simply be able to run roughshod ..." Don't kid yourself, however, that won't stop them from trying or even succeeding!

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COMMENTS: 
*  The treasonous GOPER nuclear option is all that society has been dealing with, since the day they darkened Congress.  So what else is news? It would be great if there are some anti GOPER ballistic missiles on standby, in case they decide to create more of their treasonous havoc on society.
*  I guess things are going so well lately, we have to find something with which to scare ourselves. From what I've seen so far, there is zero indication that any of the Republicans running will ascend to the presidency. Further, Republicans have approx. 24 Senate seats up for reelection in 2016. (Dems have 10). Republicans at this point have more to worry about -- ie, keeping a Senate majority -- than we do.
*  you are right on about the different republican groups but the thing that brings them together to vote for or against legislation is fear. fear of being primaried and removed from office. then we have the dems who vote against the president because they are clueless.
*  Never trust a republican when it comes to something they say they're not going to do - see McCrory, NC, Snyder, MI, Walker, WI and just about every republican everywhere.  Of course they're going to deny it now - if they admitted it it would give Democrats another thing to run on - a vote for them will mean they'll get rid of _____— (fill in the blank - ACA, social security, etc.).  Quite frankly they should run on this doom and gloom scenario anyway, because we could use anything to boost our often anemic turnout.
*  The extremely limited "nuclear option" Senator Reid arranged came in response to years of republican filibusters staged for no reason but to spite a popular Democrat who had the additional sin of having a good, natural tan.  Federal courts were disastrously backlogged due to a lack of justices, and bureaus and departments were limping along without heads and secretaries.  All for petty spite.   And now the same source of all that petty spite dissembles with projection and feigned indignation.  This is my surprised look.
*   Honestly, with the freakshow brewing in the GOP corner of the Presidential Election, I find it highly doubtful that any of them win. Also, the map for 2016 already benefits democrats.
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A GOP ‘nuclear option’ would bring sweeping consequences
By Steve Benen, July 2, 2015

If Americans elected a Republican White House and a Republican Congress next year, a sharp, national turn to the far-right would be obvious, but there would still be some limits. Most measures would still need Senate approval, and the most radical GOP ideas would struggle in the face of Democratic filibusters.

But what if a newly invigorated Republican majority decided to scrap legislative filibusters so GOP lawmakers could simply do as they pleased?

Late last week, Jeb Bush said he “would certainly consider” getting rid of filibusters altogether – executing a new “nuclear option” – in order to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Scott Walker was even more enthusiastic about the idea, saying he would “absolutely” pursue such a strategy if it helped him dismantle the nation’s health care system.

This week, as Bloomberg Politics reported, two more Republican presidential hopefuls – Rick Perry and Carly Fiorina – said they, too, would urge GOP senators to rewrite Senate rules in order to “repeal Obamacare.”

Republican senators themselves, however, say they’re not interested. The Hill reported this week:

Senate Republicans appear to be closing the door on gutting the filibuster, brushing aside calls from GOP presidential hopefuls Jeb Bush and Scott Walker to consider lowering the 60-vote threshold for repealing ObamaCare.

Sources close to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) say there’s virtually no chance he will go along with abolishing the filibuster, something he has strongly criticized in the past.

Even Ted Cruz is cool to the idea, telling Hugh Hewitt this week, “I believe ending the legislative filibuster would ultimately undermine conservative principles.” The Club for Growth also voiced skepticism.

In theory, that should effectively end the conversation, but there’s still a little more to it.

For now, it’s largely an academic exercise, speculating about a hypothetical. But imagine if Republicans found themselves in 2017 and 2018 in the same boat as Democrats for most of 2009 and 2010 – American voters gave them control of the levers of power, but their agenda was stymied by the minority.

Is it possible that Republicans might change their mind about filibusters after a few months or years of Democratic obstructionism? Of course it is. Paul Waldman had a good piece on this yesterday for the Washington Post.

[C]onsider this scenario. It’s the spring of 2017, just months after Republicans achieved their victory at the polls. President Walker (or Rubio, or Bush) is moving to implement the agenda that he ran on. Republicans in Congress are eager to pass the bills they’ve been fantasizing about for the last eight years. And there’s a full docket of them: tax cuts, a national ban on abortions after the 20th week of a woman’s pregnancy, eliminating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, forbidding the EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions, lightening Wall Street’s terrible regulatory burden, block granting safety net programs, and, of course, the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Yet Democrats and their filibuster stand in the way of it all.

It isn’t hard to imagine that the pressure from Republican legislators, the party’s base and a new president eager to make his mark, all of whom would be urging McConnell to get rid of the filibuster, would be overwhelming.

What’s more, let’s not discount the possibility that Senate Republicans are … how do I put this gently … fibbing.

GOP leaders are no doubt aware that their party’s agenda is not popular and that the party overall has a well-deserved reputation for radicalism. It’s in the Republicans’ interest to leave Americans with the impression that policymaking in Washington is slow, difficult, and prone to gridlock. “We can vote for Republicans,” mainstream voters are supposed to think, “because Democrats will be there to keep them from going too far.”

And so, before the 2016 elections, GOP officials have an incentive to leave Americans with the impression that Republicans won’t simply be able to run roughshod, passing every right-wing idea that pops into their minds.

But come 2017, would a powerful GOP controlling all the levers of power go in a different direction?
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