Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) argued on Monday that Democrats were “having a tough time coming to grips with the election results.” McConnell also criticized Democrats for promising to filibuster President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Neil Gorsuch.
In an op-ed for Politico Magazine, McConnell characterized some Senate Democrats’ promised resistance to Gorsuch as the result of the party’s base “rioting against reality” and said Democrats are threatening to filibuster his nomination “for one reason: to hurt Donald Trump.”
“Look, we all get it,” McConnell wrote. “Democrats are having a tough time coming to grips with the election results. They wish it had turned out differently. I understand their disappointment. I know their base is rioting against reality. I know the far left is demanding obstructionist tactics at any cost. I realize that Leader Schumer in particular is under immense pressure from the radical fringes of our politics. But he and his party can’t allow themselves to be led around by the far left.”
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) told Politico before Gorsuch was announced as Trump’s nominee that he would “definitely object to a simple majority” vote for the seat. And in his op-ed, McConnell referenced a floor speech from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), in which Schumer declared that McConnell would be forced to reach the 60 votes necessary to defeat a filibuster. A handful of Democrats have publicly supported a filibuster.
McConnell is considering using the so-called “nuclear option” if faced with an unbreakable Democratic filibuster, in which a simple majority could change the Senate rules on confirming Supreme Court nominees.
McConnell further wrote in his op-ed that Republicans didn’t filibuster either of President Obama’s two successful nominees to the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan or Sonia Sotomayor. The majority leader answered for Republican obstruction of Obama’s third nominee for the court, Merrick Garland, by saying he had “been consistent all along” that President Obama’s successor should pick the nominee to fill late Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat.
“Democrats now have a choice,” McConnell concluded. “They can tear our country apart further, or they can stand up and lead.”
