Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer announced Thursday morning that he will try to lead fellow Senate Democrats to block an up-or-down vote on the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. The Democratic leader demanded a new nominee (who takes a liberal approach to constitutional law).
In a closely divided Senate (Republicans hold a 52-48 majority), it would only take three Republicans to let Schumer have his way, but comments from several Senate Republicans suggest they’re not going to give in to Democratic demands.
Arizona senator John McCain hinted Thursday afternoon that he’s ready to confirm Judge Neil Gorsuch with a simple majority if Senate Democrats take the unprecedented step of filibustering a Supreme Court nominee. Asked what Republicans should do if 41 or more Democrats try to block Gorsuch, McCain told THE WEEKLY STANDARD: “I think we’ll address it when it happens. None of us want to do it, but we’re going to confirm Gorsuch.”
Earlier Thursday, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina also signaled that he’s willing to confirm Neil Gorsuch with a simple majority. “Whatever it takes to get him on the court, I will do,” Graham said when asked on the Mike Gallagher radio show about eliminating the 60-vote threshold for Supreme Court nominees, a rules change sometimes known as the “nuclear option.”
In 2013, then-Majority Leader Harry Reid invoked the “nuclear option” on federal judges and executive branch appointees. The 2013 rules change didn’t explicitly affect Supreme Court nominees, but Reid vowed in October 2016 that fellow Democrats would confirm a Democratic Supreme Court nominee with a simple majority if Democrats won the Senate and the White House.
If my Democratic colleagues choose to filibuster [Gorsuch], then they will be telling me that they don’t accept the election results,” Lindsey Graham said Thursday, “and that’s not right and we would have to change the rules to have the Supreme Court like everybody else.” Graham pointed out that in roughly 200 years, the filibuster has never been used to block an ethical Supreme Court nominee. (The Senate failed to invoke cloture on Supreme Court justice Abe Fortas’s nomination to be chief justice, but Fortas was dogged by ethical questions.)
Most Republican senators confidently predicted Gorsuch would be confirmed but declined to say directly if they’d vote to kill a Democratic filibuster. “He’s an eminently qualified candidate, and it’s a shame they even think about doing that,” North Carolina’s Thom Tillis said of a Democratic filibuster. “At the end of the day, he gets confirmed.”
Arizona’s Jeff Flake told TWS: “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, but I think we’ll get him confirmed.”
“There’s no reason for anybody to filibuster,” said Lisa Murkowski, a moderate from Alaska. “Gorsuch is a good guy.”
The comments from McCain and Graham are particularly significant because they’re two of three remaining senators who were members of the “Gang of 14,” a bipartisan group of senators who struck a deal to keep the filibuster for federal judges in 2005. When Democrats invoked the “nuclear option” eight years after Republicans declined to do so, McCain declared: “This changes everything, this changes everything…. They succeeded and they will pay a very, very heavy price for it.”
