Oregon senator Jeff Merkley, who spoke on the Senate floor for 15 hours Tuesday night and Wednesday morning in opposition to the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, said in an interview three years ago that he supported eliminating the 60-vote procedural threshold for High Court nominees regardless of which party controlled Congress and the White House. He supports a full filibuster of Gorsuch, expected to come Thursday.
Merkley made his initial comments a couple of weeks after Republicans captured the upper chamber in the 2014 midterm elections, a result that handed the GOP the reins just a year after Democrats changed Senate rules to lower the vote requirement to end debate on lower court nominees from 60 to 51. (The numbers assume the participation of all 100 senators.)
