More Senate Terminology

The Nuclear Option is Lott's term for changing Senate rule by claiming that the change is no change. I read somewhere the tinfoil hat idea that Lott deliberately tricked Frist into promising to go nuclear in an effort to get his old job back. Inventing the term would fit that scheme wouldn't it.

I proposed the thermonuclear option for the Democrats threat to respond by obstrucing everything.

Now they have discovered a much more precise weapon which will have less fallout. By ignoring an unwritten rule of the Senate they can force votes on populist amendments looking good and hurting Republicans at the same time. This clearly is the neutron bomb option.