The Archaic Senate Rules

An article by Edward Whelan in the latest issue of "National Review" highlights the archaic nature of Senate rules. Whelan describes how easy it would be for the Democratic minority in the Senate to block consideration of Trump appointments to the existing 70 vacancies in the federal court system.

Even though cloture (cutting off debate) now requires only 51 votes, instead of 60 as was previously the case, the cloture process itself is still quite cumbersome and time-consuming. Whelan says that the rules require that the Senate must wait two business days before voting on a cloture motion. If the cloture motion is successful, debate can still continue for 30 more floor hours. It is easy to see that, under these rules, the Democrats could conceivably tie up the Senate for the bulk of the 2018 year with delaying tactics on the 70 different nominees for judgeships.

What I'm wondering is this: why doesn't the Senate simply change the rules with regard to how cloture motions are handled? It would seem to be a simple matter to do so, just as the Senate changed the required majority for a cloture vote from three-fifths to a simple majority.

In a long article entitled "Nuclear Option", Wikipedia describes how the prevailing view is that it requires only a simple majority for the Senate to change its rules. In light of this, the continuation of archaic rules is inexplicable, as well as inexcusable.