USA TODAY International Edition
Nuclear options could blow up more than just the filibuster
Court picks aren’t all that’s at stake
WASHINGTON By using the “nuclear option” to confirm Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, Senate leaders may blow up the chamber’s unique bipartisan tradition in the process, destroying any hope for compromise on key issues facing the country, congressional experts warn.
It also could result in more ideologically extreme nominees for the high court and increase pressure on Senate leaders to do away with the filibuster rule entirely — a move that experts say would drastically weaken the Senate’s strong minority rights that are intended to protect Americans against the unchecked power of the majority party.
“It’s a sad day,” said Jennifer Lawless, a government professor and director of the Women and Politics Institute at American University. “The Senate was supposed to be better than this.”
Republican leaders are poised to move Thursday to change the Senate’s filibuster rules so that Democrats can no longer block Gorsuch’s confirmation.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R- Ky., is expected to invoke the “nuclear option,” a rules change that would allow a simple majority of senators to force an up- or- down vote on the nomination.
Under current rules, 60 votes are required to advance a Supreme Court nomination to the Senate floor. Republicans hold 52 of the Senate’s 100 seats.
Democrats started the Senate down this road in 2013, when former majority leader Harry Reid, D- Nev., invoked the nuclear option for confirming lower court nominees and Cabinet nominees.
Reid was frustrated that Republicans, who were in the minority at the time, blocked votes on former president Barack Obama’s judicial nominees.
Veteran Sen. John McCain, RAriz., said Wednesday that he will vote for the nuclear option so that Gorsuch can be confirmed, but he said he fears for the future of both the court and the Senate.
“Now that we are entering into an era where a simple majority decides all judicial nominations, we will see more and more nominees from the extremes of both the left and the right,” McCain said in a speech on the Senate floor. “I do not see how that will ensure a fair and impartial judiciary. In fact, I think the opposite will be true and Americans will no longer be confident of equal protection under the law.”
McCain said he is “torn between protecting the traditions and practices of the Senate, and the importance of having a full complement of justices on the U. S. Supreme Court.”