The Senate should have wrapped up its business this week, but the GOP is acting like sugared-up eight-year-olds in retaliation for the filibuster rules change.

Senators routinely breeze through a raft of year-end nominations, approving them quickly in order to bolt home for the holidays.

This year it’s different.

The Grinch in this all-too-familiar drama? Republicans say it’s Reid, who torpedoed any hope for increased comity in the world’s greatest deliberative body by changing its rules in November.

Presidential executive nominees and most judicial nominees now need only a simple majority to advance in the 100-member Senate, erasing a century-old rule that this require a 60-vote supermajority.

That threshold, the core of a blocking tactic known as the filibuster, has essentially ended with the rule change, leaving many in the Senate flabbergasted at their loss of delaying power.

“Senator Reid has made it a very divisive place,” John Cornyn, the Senate’s number two Republican, told AFP.

As payback for Reid’s maneuver, Republicans have been forcing the Senate to drag out consideration of nominees.

At one point last week the Senate remained in session for 48 straight hours.

Santa needs to kick some ass.

HT to Rachel Maddow for the post title.