There will be no negative consequences for Harry Reid’s abuse of Senate procedures.  These abuses include refusing to allow hundreds of House-passed bills  to come to a vote and his infamous change requiring only a bare majority to approve most judges, which enabled President Obama to pack the bench of the federal judiciary.  

Instead Senator McConnell plans to turn the other cheek. If you think this noble example will inspire Democrats to behave themselves the next time they get control of the Senate, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you. “Please sir, may I have another!”

Neil Lesniewski writes an article titled “McConnell Plots a Functional, Bipartisan Senate”  in Roll Call:

Sen. Mitch McConnell wants to hit the ground running in January — and he thinks Democrats are ready to join him in crafting a more open, functional Senate.

In an exclusive interview in his Capitol office suite, the incoming majority leader told CQ Roll Call he’s been preparing his would-be chairmen to move quickly since spring.

“The worst experience any majority can have is that you convene and you look around and nothing’s ready to go. So what I said to the members who hoped they would be chairmen [was], ‘Let’s don’t have that problem. Be thinking now about legislation that you have, preferably that enjoys some Democratic support, because we certainly didn’t think we were going to have 60 and we don’t,’” the Kentucky Republican said.

McConnell pointed to conversations he’s had with Democrats, whose cooperation will be required to get the Senate functioning as he would like.

“Up to half the calls I got after the election were from Democratic senators. I’m not implying that they were happy I won, but they were awfully curious as to whether I really meant it early last year when I pointed out that we needed to run the Senate in a very different way,” he said. “I think there’s going to be bipartisan gratitude for having a chance to be relevant, to not be marginalized.”

This is as hardball as McConnell plans to get:

McConnell wasn’t saying he would never use procedural tools, such as the Rule 14 process, to bypass committees or filling the “amendment tree” to block amendments, but he certainly wants those tools to be far more rarely used than in recent years under Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

At least he didn’t follow Hillary Clinton’s lead and vow to have empathy for Senate Democrats.