[exit82]

Push the nuke button, Mitch.

That is what UpChuck fears the most.

Just.

Do.

It.

[TakebackGOP]

I’m not worried that Gorsuch will be stopped.

[Proud_texan]

He can try mashing the button but if I understand it correctly the nuke option can be invoked but if it's challenged it takes a majority vote to push it through.

I'm not sure there are 51 votes there.... I point to the usual suspects like Collins as well as McCain et al.

I might add that I may totally misunderstand the process.

[alloysteel]

Does anyone think for a MINUTE, that if the situation were reversed, and Chuck Schumer had a bare majority in the Senate, with Herself occupying the White Shack, he would hesitate to exercise the Nuclear Option, abandoning the filibuster tradition for once and for all, covering legislative as well as confirmation votes?

Apparently, the tradition of the filibuster is a vestige of another time, and no longer applicable since about the time the direct election of Senators was authorized under the 17th Amendment, over a hundred years ago.

It used to be incumbent upon anyone trying to mount a filibuster, that the participants had to get up and TALK, for hours or days on end, declaiming all the reasons for the objections, in an attempt to persuade the fellow Senators to switch their vote. The tradition of cloture was merely to terminate this hold on the floor, and THAT is what required the 60% or two-thirds of the quorum, or whatever the number was designated to be.