As discussed many times recently, Democrats have a yuge problem stopping Trump from naming just about anyone he wants to the Supreme Court, Will Republicans press SCOTUS Nuclear Option button?
In 2013, Democrats pulled the Nuclear Option, eliminating filibusters on all judicial nominees short of the Supreme Court. That was an imaginary line in the sand Democrats thought they could rely on to defend themselves in the future as to Republican nominees to the Supreme Court. Though Republican’s sometimes threatened to go nuclear, only Harry Reid and the Democrats did it.
Republicans warned Democrats that they would come to regret it, maybe sooner than Democrats expected:
As election day approached this year, and Democrats expected Hillary to win the presidency and Democrats to retake the Senate by a vote or two, Democrats Harry Reid and Tim Kaine promised that the Nuclear Option would be used to get Hillary’s picks on the Supreme Court.
But it didn’t work out as expected, and now Republicans are hinting that the Nuclear Option will be used to fill the Scalia seat and any other seats that become vacant in the coming four years.
I’m not confident that Republicans in the Senate will push the Nuclear Option button, but maybe they’ll surprise us.
Chuck Schumer was just confronted by Chris Wallace on the Democrats Nuclear Option history. Schumer was in an obviously awkward position. He kept coming back to the fact that Democrats didn’t do it on the Supreme Court — but that’s an arbitrary line drawn by Democrats at a time when there were no Supreme Court openings.
The discussion of the Supreme Court starts here. Here is the portion specifically about the Nuclear Option:
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