GRAHAM: Well, number one, we're not going to let Senator Schumer define mainstream conservatism. He's my friend, but that's not going to happen. Here's why I was part of the Gang of the 14, and I'm going to lay it all out on the table for you on a Sunday morning. I'm not for filibustering. I think when you start ideologically driven filibusters that are partisan, you erode the people who want to serve over time in the judiciary because it becomes reprisal politics. `We're going to pay back the Democrats.' So partisan filibusters based on judicial philosophy or ideology erode the judiciary, weaken the presidency and hurt the Senate. So I wanted to stop that and we did. We had a chance to start over. But here's what you're going to get, Chuck. You're going to get a solid conservative. He ran on the idea that `I like Scalia and I like Thomas and I'm going to send a conservative up.' He is not going to pick someone in the mold of Sandra Day O'Connor because we tell him he has to. There's no ideological swap test here. He's going to do what he said he did in his campaign. Roberts was in that kind of mode. Alito, Luttig, all these people are solid conservatives, and if they're filibustered based on ideology and philosophy, that's setting aside an election and the filibuster will not stand.
I predict enough DEMs will swing over and vote in favor of cloture, so that the nuclear option remains naught but a credible deterreant to cloture abuse.