McConnell: Gorsuch Will Be Confirmed Next Week

Going Nuclear?

Facing press cameras Tuesday U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told reporters that Judge Neil Gorsuch will be confirmed next Friday, flatly stating that “no Supreme Court justice has ever been stopped with a partisan filibuster.” 

McConnell did concede that there had been a situation over the nomination process of Associate Justice Abe Fortas in 1968 by President Lyndon Johnson, who’d been blocked in a bipartisan filibuster from becoming the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

“We’re going to get Judge Gorsuch confirmed,” McConnell told reporters. “It’ll really be up to [Democrats] how the process to confirm Judge Gorsuch moves forward.” 

“He’ll be on the floor of the Senate next week and confirmed on Friday,” McConnell added. “We are optimistic that [Democrats] will not be successful in keeping this good man from joining the Supreme Court real soon.” 

POLTICO reported late Tuesday afternoon that “the cagey Senate majority leader refused to say that he would do it via the ‘nuclear option’ — a unilateral change in rules to kill the Senate’s 60-vote threshold on Supreme Court nominees. But McConnell also declined to rule out whipping 50 of his 52 members to change the rules if Democrats deny Gorsuch the required 60 votes to end a filibuster.”

This caused Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, to respond. “It’s going to be on [McConnell’s] shoulders and only on his shoulders. Let’s not forget,” the New York Democrat added. “This is the man who broke 230 years of precedent and held Judge Garland up for a year and a half and now is complaining? Doesn’t really wash.” 

Four separate Senatorial sources told NCRM Tuesday afternoon that McConnell utilizing the nuclear option was not talk or political blustering by the Majority Leader – it was a political reality and was as good as already accomplished.

To avoid the nuclear option, eight Democrats would have to vote for Gorsuch, or McConnell would have to back down.

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Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license