McConnell says Americans won't tolerate Democrats blocking SCOTUS nominations

[Virginiá]

If you want to obstruct and make 2018 a referendum on Trump's potential Supreme Court nominees, be my guest. This should help the GOP in ND, WV, MT, IN, MO, etc. and could make 2002 look like a Democratic wave year.

You are so liberal with your incumbent GOP president midterm wave year prospects. Most people don't care about it that much, and the ones that do on the GOP side are already voting for them regardless. If they pass a botched "repeal and replace" plan that results in millions losing their health insurance, anger from the fallout is going to override things like the USSC.

But, either way, I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that Mitch finds the votes to gut the scotus filibuster if Democrats try this - even if just by a hair.

[Virginiá]

Given that ideological division between the two parties has increased since then and given some of the things said over not just the last year but the last 10 years it seems likely that such an appointment will never happen again.

Maybe you are right. The constant evolution of tactics into a "do whatever it takes as long as I get what I want" strategy is basically ensuring such a situation.

It's a shame, really. Judicial nominations didn't used to be such a contentious issue. It was more or less understood that the president, whoever he was, had wide latitude to staff the judiciary. This worked out even with a generations-long Democratic Senate under numerous Republican presidents. Now it's just become another branch of govt for the parties to battle for control over. The last thing this country needs is for the courts to be politicized to this level in the eyes of Americans. Both parties would do well to respect the fact that if they lose the White House, the winner gets some discretion to fill the judiciary without petty blockades. With that, the president should also respect that if their party doesn't control the Senate, they should avoid trying to install judges that tilt too far towards one side of the ideological spectrum and thus invite resistance. I do believe Obama fulfilled that this time, but we all know Mitch values power over anything else.

[Virginiá]

By "gut" do you mean rounding up 60 votes, or pressing the nuke button with 50 votes (I assume Pence can vote to break a tie here, but I am not sure on something that pertains solely to the internal Senate rules)?

The nuclear option. When combined with Democrats, there are technically enough votes in the GOP Senate caucus in regards to upholding traditions like this, but this is a situation where it pits Senate tradition vs the ideological direction of the Supreme Court, which conservatives have been using to achieve their goals for years now. I'm not convinced that they will choose tradition over the USSC.

That being said, personally I wish Schumer would try and squeeze some circuit court picks Mitch blockaded under Obama out of Trump in return for no opposition to his SCOTUS pick. That seems like a wiser choice given the issue of the filibuster, but I guess politically it might not fly well with the base, which expects something that Democrats likely can't deliver.