Republicans realize that childishness has consequences

After alienating even their own constituents with an ill-considered government shutdown, a filibuster free-for-all and a juvenile reaction to the detonation of the “nuclear option” by Senate Democrats, Republicans have come down with a case of responsibility. It’s about time.

First there was the bipartisan two-year budget agreement worked out by former firebrand Rep. Paul D. Ryan, the Republican Budget Committee chairman, and his Democratic counterpart, Sen. Patty Murray. It passed the House with significant GOP support, and Speaker John A. Boehner added insult to injury by publicly dissing right-wing groups that opposed the deal.

Now it seems that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has called a halt to his caucus’ childish use of delaying tactics to drag out the confirmation of even uncontroversial nominees. The Times’ Mike Memoli reports that McConnell and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid declared a ceasefire that avoided a weekend session that would have been necessary if the GOP had continued its petulant pettifoggery. A final slate of pending nominations will apparently be considered expeditiously next week.

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The Republicans insistence on exhausting all of the time available to them to debate nominations was “tit” for the “tat” of the Democrats’ decision to abolish the filibuster for all presidential nominations except those for the Supreme Court. But the nuclear option was triggered only after Republicans blocked three of President Obama’s nominations to an appeals court in Washington, on the pretext that the court was underworked. So, in playground parlance, the Republicans started it.

And now they seem to recognize that their childishness had consequences.

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Follow Michael McGough on Twitter @MichaelMcGough3