Filibust-ed

For all Democrats’ hyperbolic howls of outrage over Senate Republicans’ vote Thursday to “go nuclear” and end the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations, it is without question the left that has driven the “judge wars” to this point.

The filibuster, a requirement that 60 senators agree to end debate to allow an actual up-or-down vote, didn’t traditionally apply to judicial confirmations. It was invoked in 1968 against the nomination of Abe Fortas to become chief justice — but with bipartisan backing, for largely nonideological reasons.

Notably, no one tried to use it to stop Clarence Thomas in 1991, though he had just 52 votes for his high-court nomination.

In fact, partisan filibusters to stop nominees only date to 2002 — when Sen. Chuck Schumer rallied Democrats to kill Miguel Estrada’s nomination to the DC Court of Appeals. Dems then routinely used the tactic against President George W. Bush’s judicial choices — and Republicans started re- turning the favor in the Obama years.

So then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid used a limited nuclear option in 2013, ending the 60-vote rule for all nominations except to the high court — despite warnings it would have consequences for Democrats.

Now it has, and rightly so — as the GOP nuclear move ensures confirmation of Judge Neil Gorsuch, against whom Democrats could muster no real argument, other than that he isn’t Judge Merrick Garland.

And, no, Republicans didn’t help the cause of Senate comity by refusing even a hearing for Garland last year. But they were simply applying a standard — the “Biden rule,” after Sen. Joe Biden — that Democrats set long ago, when the shoe was on the other foot in the last year of Republican presidencies.

What the GOP has really done is ensure, as Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said, that there will no longer be two sets of standards: one for a Democratic president’s nominees and another for a Republican.