This is the step that I speculate will NOT happen. Cloture was brought up by the GOP, for judicial nominees, about 20 times in the last Congress. It never worked.
I see using Rule XXII, cloture, as an ADMISSION of sorts, that the 60 vote supermajority is not inappropriate. Frist could have tackled Rule XXII at the start of the Congress, but all he did was say that he was not acquiescing to it. He did not seek unanimous consent to preserve the issue, as was done on January 3, 1957 to set-up a later head-on debate of Rule XXII itself. The pertinent material is at the second column of S14, linked below.
Page S13 of Senate Record
Page S14 of Senate Record
The following HIGHLY RECOMMENDED article has a summary of several past attempts to impose a simple majority process. Interesting in that it provides historical perspective, the "nuclear option" is nothing new. Neither is moving the vote on a simple majority, which was the written rule of the Senate from 1789 until 1806. Whatever "tradition" filibuster has, even for legislative matters, is not 200 years old. 140 years old, maybe.
http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Gold_Gupta_JLPP_article.pdf
And here are some more links, for the serious student.
RS20801 - December 11, 2002 - Cloture Attempts on Nominations
http://www.senate.gov/reference/resources/pdf/RS20801.pdf
RL30360 - March 28, 2003 - Filibusters and Cloture in the Senate
http://www.senate.gov/reference/resources/pdf/RL30360.pdf
RL32843 - March 28, 2005 - "Entrenchment" of Senate Procedure and the "Nuclear" Option for Change
http://www.afj.org/judicial/crsnuclear.pdf
RL31948 - March 29, 2005 - Evolution of Senate's Role in Nomination/Confirmation
http://shelby.senate.gov/legislation/JudNom-History.pdf
RL32684 - April 5, 2005 - Changing Senate Rules - The "Nuclear" Option
http://www.andrewhyman.com/crs.pdf
Riddick's Senate Procedure
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/riddick/browse.html