Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is just following the rules. In 2013, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., used a simple-majority vote to change the Senate’s rules, allowing confirmation of judicial nominees to non-Supreme Court posts by the same simple-majority vote. At that moment, the politics of judicial confirmations entered their end stage: The Senate’s majority now rules on when and who will get confirmed to the federal courts. When McConnell adopted “the Reid Rule” last year for Supreme Court nominees to break Democrats’ filibuster against the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch, he was merely allowing the majority of the Senate to advise and consent.
Hugh Hewitt: Trump gets to fill Kennedy’s seat. Thanks to Harry Reid.
