BY WILMOT PROVISO
Conservative Tribune
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has a message for his Democrat colleagues in the upper house: Filibuster if you want, but Neil Gorsuch is going to be a Supreme Court justice.
According to The Daily Caller, the Kentucky Republican told reporters on Tuesday that Gorsuch would be confirmed on April 7, come hell, high water, or Democrat hijinks.
“We’re going to get Judge Gorsuch confirmed,” McConnell said.
“There will be an opportunity for the Democrats to invoke cloture. We’ll see where that ends. The Democratic leader who will be out here shortly says that we will not get cloture, so that is a good question to ask him. But it’ll be really up to them how the process to confirm Judge Gorsuch goes forward.”
Not only has Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said he would lead a filibuster against Gorsuch, but he’s also implied that no Supreme Court nominee who cannot win the 60 votes needed to end a filibuster should be able to sit on the court.
“If this nominee cannot meet the same standard that Republicans insisted upon for President Obama’s nominee, 60 votes in the Senate, then the problem lies not with the Senate but with the nominee,” the New York Democrat said on the Senate floor after Gorsuch’s nomination hearing had ended.
However, as National Review points out, six justices who have served on the court — including two currently on the bench — were confirmed with fewer than 60 votes in the Senate. Even the liberal Washington Post rated Schumer’s statement “two Pinocchios” on its “lying” scale.
If McConnell and the Republicans have to do away with the filibuster to get a vote on Neil Gorsuch — a supremely qualified individual whose nomination is being obstructed only out of spite — Schumer and the Democrats have only their intransigence to blame.
McConnell’s open prediction of Gorsuch’s future had to infuriate Democrats still smarting over the November election loss that cost their party a chance to appoint the next Supreme Court justice. But their anger won’t change reality:
Neil Gorsuch will be the next man to take a seat on the Supreme Court, no matter how loudly Schumer and his Democrats want to whine about it.
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http://conservativetribune.com/mcconnell-ruffles-feathers-gorsuch/