The Gorsuch SCOTUS nomination: Can’t anybody here play this game?

-- BombThrowers: As I’ve noted previously, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is to strategy on the Neil Gorsuch nomination what Dilbert’s Pointy-haired Boss is to running a company. He’s not the only one. Here is what Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said yesterday on whether the nuclear option will mean that the filibuster will be eliminated for all votes in the Senate: “First, it is clearly just for appointments, for judicial appointments. It’s not regarding legislation.”

Sigh. What leverage do you have over Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-North Korea) if you are willing to take nuking the entire filibuster off the table? It’s as if a nation going to war tells the other side that they will use guns but not tanks. If Republicans threatened not only to nuke the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees but to nuke it entirely, Schumer might back off. And if he doesn’t, enough Democrats probably would which would mean Republicans would have the 60 votes needed to end the filibuster of Gorsuch. We’d have a lot more liberty in America if Republicans were required to take a course in political “strategery” before they assumed office. Meanwhile, Adam Jentleson took to the pages of the New York Times to support the filibuster against the Gorsuch nomination. The deputy chief of staff to former Sen. Harry Reid (D-Cuba) and current senior strategic adviser at the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress Action Fund, offers this justification:

Democrats have come by their opposition to Gorsuch honestly. In conversations with progressive groups, many senators who knew that Gorsuch would rule in ways they wouldn’t like nevertheless made it clear that they entered the judiciary committee hearings willing to be persuaded to support him, or at least not stand in his way….

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Gorsuch alienated one Democratic senator after another with his smug and evasive demeanor. Senators were not provided with the substantive answers they deserve. What a crock! Had Gorsuch provided “substantive answers,” Democrats would have used those answers as a reason to block his nomination.

The biggest irony in Jentleson’s op-ed occurs when he accuses Senate Republicans of “gaslighting.” Jentleson conveniently omits the fact that plenty of Democrats intended to filibuster Gorsuch shortly after he was nominated, most notably Schumer. The fix was in from the start. Finally, there is some reason for optimism that Neil Gorsuch will be confirmed. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was on Fox News this morning, and said this about Gorsuch: “Whatever it takes to get this highly qualified nominee on the Supreme Court, we’re going to do it.” Grassley is the type of Republican senator who has long been big on “bipartisanship.” Thus, it’s a good sign that he is keeping the nuclear option on the table.