WEAK: McConnell Suggests No Nuclear Option To Ram Through Trump’s Scotus Nominee

As Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro has been predicting for many months, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will likely eschew changing the filibuster rule, thus preventing Republicans from smoothly sliding a genuine conservative onto the Supreme Court.

On Friday, McConnell, speaking to The Hill, rebutted President Trump’s stated desire, which he articulated on Thursday, that Senate Republicans strip Democrats of the power to filibuster Supreme Court nominees of Trump’s choice.

McConnell said, “Senate rules are a matter for the Senate and a lot of other people have opinions. We’ve already adopted the rules for this Congress at the beginning of the year. Basically we didn’t adopt any because in the Senate rules are permanent, unlike the House which every two year adopts a new set of rules. We don’t. It takes 67 votes to change the rules in the Senate. We saw one rather conspicuous exception to that a few years ago but no we don’t have any current plans on the rules.”

This is nothing new from McConnell, who has always contended that the Senate’s rules could only be modified with a two-thirds vote. That contrasts with his predecessor, former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who used the so-called “nuclear-option” in 2013 to protect executive branch and most judicial nominees from filibusters.

As Shapiro tweeted back in August:

Shapiro was virtually the only conservative who opposed the nomination of John Roberts, (who later was the key vote allowing Obamacare to exist), to the Supreme Court in 2005, noting that his cipher-like resume was cause for concern:

On Tuesday evening, President Bush nominated Judge John G. Roberts Jr. to the Supreme Court of the United States. “He will strictly apply the Constitution and laws, not legislate from the bench,” Bush stated of Roberts. Conservatives immediately leapt on the Roberts bandwagon, echoing Bush’s sentiments. Talk radio commentator Hugh Hewitt labeled Roberts “a home run.” The Heritage Foundation’s legal experts cited Roberts’ “proven fidelity to the Constitution and the rule of law” in backing his nomination. Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard called Roberts “a quality pick.” Perhaps Roberts is a safe pick. He’s politically conservative and undoubtedly brilliant. He will sail through the Senate without much hassle. But it is shocking to watch many constitutional originalists and textualists abandon their philosophies in favor of cheap politics.

Roberts is not an originalist. There is nothing in his very short jurisprudential record to indicate that his judicial philosophy involves strict fidelity to the original meaning of the Constitution. He is not Antonin Scalia, nor is he Clarence Thomas. At best, he is William Rehnquist, for whom he once clerked. While Rehnquist has been a steady political conservative on the bench, the bench should not be about political persuasion: It should be about upholding the explicit words of our Founding Fathers. There is nothing to indicate that Roberts prioritizes the words of the Constitution above other, more immediate political concerns.

With the filibuster very much in place, now that McConnell refuses to use the nuclear option, a very similar situation to Bush nominating a cipher like Roberts could occur. As Shapiro pointed out: