He now says he was misquoted or something; he won't apply a litmus test. But even so, he's giving a fair assessment of where the Senate stands right now. Republicans don't have the votes to shut down a filibuster. But as a practical matter, it's the rare judicial nominee on either side who explicitly states a view on abortion, making it harder to sustain a filibuster -- senators all have things they want and if they can plausibly claim later that they were fooled, they will horse-trade. I think what Arlen is saying here is, put up conservative and presumably pro-life nominees who can make it through the nomination process. I know Bush's father apparently got burned by Souter, but he was such a wild card, very little could be discerned from his writings;
they need to do better vetting of the nominees.
Aside from the issue of the threshold for fillibusters (which threshold the Democrats will likely be above for a very long time), we want a loyal Chair in that Committee--one who will serve our Platform with regards to judicial issues.
It's bad enough that we're having to put up with the consolidation of two powers between the judicial and legislative. Our judicial branch lawmakers compromised with feminazis in several administrations to fill their pockets with our children's inheritances, but that practice stops here. The divorce/cohabitation industry is through.