Neil Gorsuch Confirmation Process Discussion (confirmed 54-45)

[emailking]

Question: if Garland doesn't have 60 votes, and the Mitch decides to use nuclear option, will he need 50+Pence or 51 votes? When Reid did it, he had 52 votes so this wasn't in question.

50+ Pence. They'd potentially also get Pence to preside over the Senate during the nuclear option vote. At least that's how Republicans planned it when they first invented the concept.

They need 51 or 50 + Pence to change the Senate rules to invoke the nuclear option, but cloture would still require 51 senators. There's no tie to break. Cloture requires a certain fraction of the full number of senators voting to cut off debate.

[emailking]

Jeff Merkey might be starting a talking filibuster right now against Gorsuch.

Funny, isn't that the "Filibuster must be abolished" guy?

Again, unbelieveable Democratic hypocrisy...

He's only ever advocated for abolishing the procedural filibuster. He supports the talking filibuster and made a point of that in all of the interviews he gave on filibuster reform. So no, it's not hypocrisy.

[emailking]

Correct. Other than base pressure, I am still wondering just what animated the Dem strategy here.

I think it was to get Republicans to kill the filibuster for SCOTUS.

In 2013, they left cloture for SCOTUS alone because they were afraid that Republicans could stack the court with conservatives at some point. But when it became clear that they're going to block everybody anyway going forward as best they can, the filibuster would hinder Democrats' ability to appoint a liberal judge. So they would have to nuke themselves anyway at some point. Better to have the Republicans do it so as to avoid the political cost.

McConell was already telegraphing that Gorsuch would get through one way or another, so the filibuster had lost its effectiveness anyway. It might have been more effective politically if they waited until a liberal judge needed replacement to press the issue, but then again, we don't know if that will happen under Trump.