Senators worry about coming blowup over Gorsuch

It’s been more than 80 years since the Senate last filled a Supreme Court vacancy that arose in a presidential election year. But they were qualified, competent, and deserving of appointment to the highest court in the land.

That’s the stance now being taken by the Republican leadership.

It won’t block Gorsuch, won’t establish any important jurisprudential principle and won’t advance Democratic strategic goals – indeed the opposite.

But what do these words mean? They preserved the filibuster when it came to Supreme Court nominations. As for the filibuster, it may not be in the Constitution, but its use goes back to 1789.

For example, during the 1930s Senator Huey Long of Louisiana spoke against bills he said favored the rich over the poor.

Edward Rightor, left, and Senator Huey P. Long get confrontational at Senate hearing in 1934. So the continued presence of the filibuster could have a tempering effect. That fact became clear Monday when the Senate Judiciary Committee approved Gorsuch’s nomination on a party-line vote but the 41st Democrat came out against the nominee.

Republicans control the Senate, 52-48, meaning they have the votes to confirm Gorsuch by Friday, as Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, has said it would do.

“There’s no sentiment to change the legislative filibuster”, he said. If 60 out of the 100 senators agree, debate can be stopped and a vote scheduled.

He recounted how, after Democrats first triggered the nuclear option to end filibusters on most nominees, the Senate practically stopped working. At the same hearing, Kelly also took some heat from Republicans; at one point, Sen.

A rules change will require majority support. So now the question is whether the Republicans have enough votes to “go nuclear” and change those procedures, essentially wiping out the ability of a minority party to filibuster a Supreme Court pick.

That’s why Corker argues that they will not be able to resist the temptation to blow up super-majority requirements on legislation.

The concern is not that the court will suddenly break down in its closed door conferences and engage in some kind of fiery partisan fight or change its rules to trigger a judicial version of a nuclear option.

Ross K. Baker is a distinguished professor of political science at Rutgers University and a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors.

They don’t call this the “nuclear option” for nothing, though.

The senator also blasted the “warfare tactic” of blocking Garland from the Supreme Court. “We’ve seen an absolutely wonderful drop in the number of migrants coming out of Central America”, Kelly said, who noted a “dramatic reduction” in the number of women and children trying to make that crossing.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) said she may have to vote to change the rules but she doesn’t want to, as if there were some pressing need to fill the seat Republicans told us was fine to leave open for a year, “If it’s necessary in order to get him confirmed, I may have to vote that way, but I certainly don’t want to…”

Why are we in this situation?

Merrick Garland walks out of White House with President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden after he was introduced as Obama’s Supreme Court nominee in 2016.

No, Republicans have no real reason for their decision to change the Senate rules to pull it to a political body like they’ve done to the House. Regardless, Ed Whelan of the Ethics and Public Policy Center notes that there isn’t much of a rationale for keeping the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees if it has already been eliminated for all other nominations. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), threats from the top Senate Republican, and salvos from people-powered campaigns around the country. Many Democrats are still seething over Republicans’ refusal previous year to even vote on former President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the court.

The nine-seat court has been operating with only eight justices since the death of conservative Antonin Scalia on February 13, 2016. And this move matters because it essentially guarantees that future nominees by presidents of both parties will be more to the extreme, on either side.

Bruce Alpert reported on this story for VOA Learning English.

Following his extended remarks, one reporter asked him which was harder: the talk-a-thon or the recent Ironman triathlon that Merkley completed.