Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is set this morning, starting at 11:00 ET, to confirm Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, one way or another. The one way will be by blowing up the filibuster when at least 45 Democrats vote against advancing the nomination. It’s worth remembering now what McConnell said back in 2013, when after years of trying to negotiate with Republicans who had been blocking dozens and dozens of Obama nominees, Harry Reid changed the rules. Reid would "be remembered as the worst leader of the Senate ever" for making that change, charged McConnell. Well, here we go.
Here’s how it happens. The Senate comes in at 10:00 and McConnell bitches and moans about how he's being forced to do this, what a fine man Gorsuch is and Democrats are ruining the Senate. Then Democratic leader Chuck Schumer will likely remind the body that this is entirely an event created by McConnell, that his unprecedented, unprincipled, unconstitutional blockade of President Obama's nominee Merrick Garland set the stage for what they're about to do.
That business will take about an hour and then at 11:00, they will have the first procedural vote, the cloture vote on the Gorsuch nomination going forward. It will fail. That's when McConnell will start the procedure to have a re-vote to set up the vote that will allow Republicans to change the Senate rules. That could take a while, as Democrats will refuse to give unanimous consent to any procedural vote that comes up. Eventually, however, the vote to change Senate rules to allow a simple majority vote on Supreme Court nominees—the nuclear option—will pass and they'll move directly to approving Gorsuch.
At this point, Senate Republicans—John McCain will probably be first—will make long impassioned statements about how terrible this thing they've been forced to do is. They will be hoping that will all forget this recent history, in which they kept a solid, consensus jurist in Merrick Garland off of the bench for pure political spite, and how they were laying the groundwork to block every single one of a potential President Clinton's nominees.
Senate Republicans have been putting party ahead of the institution and the country for years now. Today will be just one more giant leap down that path. This time it might just have consequences. They’re giving who is essentially a Republican political operative, an extremist one at that, a lifetime seat on the highest court in the land for a president who is polling at 34 percent and is under investigation by the FBI for potential treason. That’s not a good look for them.