Senate Democrats now have enough support to filibuster a final vote on President Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, but the move puts Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in a likely position to invoke the so-called "nuclear option."
This option would require changing Senate rules to allow a simple majority of 51 votes, rather than the current threshold of 60, to overcome a filibuster.
This afternoon, Gorsuch cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee by a party-line vote of 11-9 to advance to a full Senate vote.
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., became the 41st senator to announce he'll be voting against cloture.
Despite all the republican crowing going on today (4/4/2017), Mitch McConnell, the senate majority leaders dissembling tells a different tale — imo.
Steve Benen wrote up a piece yesterday on that. Steve Benen listed the numerous inconsistencies and pure fabrications in Mitch McConnell’s answers that expose a deception that strongly indicates McConnell’s realization that he is going to have a very difficult time convincing the American public that he, after 8 years of obstructing President Obama, is telling the truth.
Iow’s McConnell’s propagandized narrative(s) indicate he knows republican politicians will be blamed for breaking the Senate in order to “ram their hard right corporate shill of a nominee through.
These are the fabrications that Steve Benen listed and debunked, exposing McConnell in his interview with Chuck Todd this weekend:
1. Reflecting on the Merrick Garland nomination, and his party’s unprecedented blockade, McConnell said, “[T]he tradition had been not to confirm vacancies created in the middle of a presidential year…. We were right in the middle of a presidential election year.”
First, Garland was nominated in March, which isn’t the middle of an election year, and second, no such tradition exists in reality.
2. McConnell, pointing to the election results, argued, “The American people decided they wanted Donald Trump to make the nomination, not Hillary Clinton.”
In reality, Americans preferred Clinton to Trump by nearly 3 million votes. (Trump won by way of the electoral college, not “the American people.”)
3. McConnell added, “What’s before us now Chuck is not what happened last year.”
That’s backwards: there’s a Supreme Court vacancy because of what happened last year. What’s before us now is the direct result of the events in 2016.
4. McConnell insisted, “There’s no rational basis, no principled reason for voting against Neil Gorsuch.”
Given that McConnell imposed a year-long blockade on a qualified, compromise nominee in a raw display of maximalist partisanship, the GOP leader long ago forfeited the right to talk about “principles.”
5. Pointing to a rule that doesn’t exist, McConnell concluded, “You don’t fill Supreme Court vacancies in the middle of a presidential election. That’s what Joe Biden said back in 1992.”
That’s not even close to what Joe Biden said back in 1992.
— emphasis added
This is only my take on it. McConnell’s threat to invoke the ‘nuclear option’ is more bluff than a reality. It sure seems like Mitch McConnell’s hypocrisy and distortion of facts indicates that all the republican excuse making going on today, is another example of republican bloviating and tough talk to mask, what really seems like a out-right bluff, in hopes that Dems cave before McConnell has to.
One last thing: even if it isn’t a bluff; Stand strong Dems. Call the GOP out — imo