There'll be one person to blame for for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, and it isn't Mitch McConnell or President Trump. "God bless Harry Reid," Charles Krauthammer writes in the Washington Post. The conservative commentator argues that while Trump nominated Gorsuch and McConnell kept his seat from an Obama nominee, Reid inadvertently cleared the path for Gorsuch back in 2013 when he abolished the filibuster for all sorts of appointments and judgeships. Reid exempted Supreme Court justices from that, but the precedent was set nevertheless.
Now if Democrats try to filibuster the nomination of Gorsuch, McConnell can use the "nuclear option" already taken once by Reid. "Reid never fully appreciated the magnitude of his crime against the Senate," Krauthammer writes. Abolishing the filibuster isn't the big deal, but rather the way in which Reid did it, he argues. By getting rid of the filibuster using a simple majority instead of a supermajority, Reid essentially "rendered the place lawless." "There are no rules" if a simple majority can change an "institution's fundamental rules," Krauthammer writes. Republicans should now take advantage of Reid's mistake to approve Trump's nominees before working with Democrats to make a supermajority a requirement to change major rules. Read the full piece here. (More Neil Gorsuch stories.)
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