Hollywood Hosts Downplay Harry Reid's Nuclear Option

Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart recently scurried to the defense of the wily Harry Reid.

With late-night humor as a cover, the Comedy Central hosts parroted the themes of the left-leaning news media regarding the Senate majority leader’s unprecedented move to exercise the so-called nuclear option, which in one fateful stroke changed the more than 200-year-old procedure for filibustering presidential nominees.

With tongue solidly in cheek, Colbert, portraying his faux conservative character, referred to the day of the Reid bombshell as “the last day of America” and announced that he was leaving the U.S. to go to a little known foreign territory called “South Carolina.”

Colbert’s late night persona then expressed mock worry as he somberly proclaimed the following: “We have just witnessed the death of an American institution.”

After explaining that the ability of senators to filibuster is “one of our founding principles,” Colbert’s character dismissed the importance of the procedure that since America’s earliest legislative days has distinguished the upper chamber of Congress from the lower.

“That’s why it’s not in the Constitution,” he continued. “It was going to be, but it got filibustered.”

The truth of the matter is the Constitution of the United States was created with the noble underlying goal of safeguarding individual liberty from unbridled governmental power. Checks and balances contained in the document were placed there with the specific intent to protect the minority from what James Madison called “the tyranny of the majority.”

The filibuster against judicial nominees is an essential component of the Senate’s “advise and consent” function, which, incidentally, is actually contained in the Constitution.

The “Colbert Report” host ignored the Democrats’ sledge hammering of our nation’s foundational document and instead swung his malicious mallet at Republicans.

“So what’s gonna happen in Washington now — something?” the late night host said. “We were this close to achieving a Zen-like state of perfect government nothingness. Not since the Buddah have so many fat, bald men worked so hard to do so little.”

What is certainly not a laughing matter is the fact that, as a result of Reid’s radical rule change, President Obama will now be able to stack the powerful D.C. Circuit Court, i.e., the tribunal that hears most of the challenges to executive branch actions.

In further unfunny news fakery, Colbert’s comedic colleague Stewart opened the “Daily Show” with the story of Reid’s nuclear option treachery. Much like the scores of other apologists who routinely pop up on cable network shows to do the Democrats’ bidding, Stewart chose to turn a blind eye to the danger that Reid’s act poses to our battered republic and instead focused on the terminology that is being used to describe the majority leader’s procedural ploy.

Following footage of a reporter who was warning that Reid may be imposing the nuclear option on the Senate, Stewart let out a loud shriek and sarcastically cried, “Nooooo! No Harry don’t! — There’s still good in this world. Don’t kill us all.”

After another reporter explained the meaning of the term “nuclear option,” Stewart mugged and shrugged as he asked with requisite snark, “So, deciding to allow majority rules to incrementally increase government efficiency in presidential appointments is so unthinkably extreme, it’s the nuclear option?”

Responding to his own question, Stewart then said, “It’s just like the Hiroshima . . . of voting.”

The term “nuclear option” was used long before Reid and his guileful gang decided to implement it. In 2005 when Republicans merely raised the subject of filibuster procedures, then-Sen. Obama declared that “the talk of the ‘nuclear option’ is more about power than about fairness.”

Joe Biden, Obama’s fellow senator at the time, called the nuclear option “an example of the arrogance of power.” And Reid himself characterized the altering of the Senate rules as “un-American” and “illegal.”

Still, Stewart chose not to target any Democrats in his sketch. He instead landed several punches on GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

“Mark my words!” Stewart said, imitating McConnell. “One day you Democrats will want to be obstructionist a**holes making a mockery of our system of government? And who’ll be laughing then? Turtle man!”

Before Stewart and Colbert used their shows to re-craft Reid’s power grab, ABC and NBC used euphemistic language in an apparent effort to minimize the impact of the news story. Both of the networks news anchors referred to the ominous procedural maneuver as “historic change.”

ABC’s Dan Harris called the act that will undoubtedly have serious ramifications on Congress’ upper chamber a “bold move.” And Norah O'Donnell wistfully wondered if Democrats were going to “regret invoking the nuclear option.”

Bill Maher also focused on possible Democrat regret in his opening monologue as he cracked, “It feels good now but it’s not going to feel so good when President Ted Cruz fills the D.C. Circuit Court with Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, and a fetus.”

Maher failed to mention that right now the president can, without hindrance, appoint to the D.C. Circuit Court Van Jones, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, and whoever else he so chooses.

Dennis Rodman may even have a shot at U.S. ambassador to North Korea.