President of the Center For American Progress Action Fund Tom Perriello released a statement Thursday lauding the Democratically-controlled Senate’s vote to enact the nuclear option and contradicting the left-wing organization's former stance on the subject:
Today’s vote to reform the Senate rules is a victory for the American people and an important step towards getting Washington back to work. Today’s targeted reforms come after years of unprecedented partisan obstruction by the same Republicans who shut down the government and repeatedly held our economy hostage. By abusing the rules of the Senate, the Republican minority has used extreme tactics to retroactively veto laws and the institutions that uphold them.
However, like the about-faces by President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) on the issue, the statement by the former Democratic congressman directly contradicts the stance held by CAP when Republicans held the majority.
In 2005, under a Republican-led Senate, then-CAP president John Podesta was touting a much different line, decrying the nuclear option as "no ordinary legislative proposal" that would cause "lasting damage."
"Thoughtful voices on both the right and the left have raised profound concerns that breaking longstanding Senate rules to terminate debate on judicial nominations will cause lasting damage to the Senate and to our constitutional system of checks and balances," he said then. "Should this effort succeed, it could permanently impair the ability of the Senate to provide an effective counterweight to presidential power, giving whoever occupies the Oval Office virtually unchecked power to appoint whomever he pleases."