Gorsuch Cloture Vote Fails – But Just for Now
In a procedural vote Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell failed to garner enough votes for Judge Neil Gorsuch late Thursday morning. 60 votes were required to invoke cloture, the process that ends debate and allows a bill – or a Supreme Court nomination – to proceed to a vote. The final vote was 55-45.
Senator McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, has the option of allowing Judge Gorsuch’s nomination to fail. Instead, he has said he will choose what is known as the nuclear option – changing the rules of the Senate in order to achieve what could not be accomplished under the existing rules.
Rather than the White House withdrawing its candidate, which has been done several times in recent history (President George W. Bush was forced to withdraw Harriet Miers, President Lyndon Johnson was forced to do so twice), President Trump and Senator McConnell have decided to barrel ahead and destroy one of the few the last remaining distinctions that make the United States Senate one of the world’s greatest deliberative bodies.
Stay tuned for new developments.
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