WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans wiped away at least a century of tradition Thursday to overcome Democratic opposition and save Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court, scotching filibuster rules that once encouraged consensus-building in the upper chamber but more recently have become tools for gridlock.
The procedural gymnastics choreographed by majority leader Mitch McConnell set President Trump up for a major win Friday with the expected final confirmation vote for Gorsuch, a conservative-leaning, deeply experienced judge on the Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Colorado.
But few in the Senate were celebrating use of what is known as the “nuclear option,’’ a descriptor that recognizes the impact of the maneuver on the Senate’s clubby, collegial ideals and what little remains of its traditions of negotiation and consensus-building.
Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, said history will remember what the GOP did Thursday for all the wrong reasons.
On a day of heavy name-calling between parties on Capitol Hill, Schumer called the debate surrounding Gorsuch’s confirmation “a cautionary tale about how unbridled partisan escalation can ultimately overwhelm our basic inclination to work together.”
“There’s a reason it was dubbed the nuclear option,” Schumer said. “This is a day when we irrevocably move away from the principles our founders intended for these institutions: principles of bipartisanship, moderation, and consensus.”
As the Senate voted on successive motions related to abolishing the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, senators sat somberly in their seats, in virtual silence. Absent was the usual chatter and backslapping that accompanies roll-call votes. Instead, senators from both sides behaved as though they were marching to the gallows. They universally lamented the potential for even greater partisanship, even as many engaged in partisan finger-pointing over the outcome.
“It’s a bad day for democracy,” said Arizona Republican John McCain as he grimly made his way to the Senate floor and prepared to join his fellow Republicans in eliminating the filibuster.
Democrats forced McConnell’s hand when they successfully filibustered Gorsuch’s nomination late Thursday morning, preventing Republicans from achieving the 60 votes needed to end debate and proceed to a confirmation vote.
The Democrats say Gorsuch is too conservative and will be beholden to corporate interests over the rights of individuals. They also remain incensed that the GOP-controlled Senate refused to take up the nomination of Merrick Garland, who then-President Barack Obama picked to fill the seat vacated by the death of former Justice Antonin Scalia.
Without deployment of the nuclear option, Gorsuch’s nomination would have died in the procedural stages, because there were not 60 senators willing to close the debate on his nomination.
Now that McConnell deployed the nuclear tactic to close debate, the Gorsuch confirmation can continue to its last step, where he can gain final approval from senators with just a simple majority vote.
“Our Democratic colleagues have done something today that is unprecedented in the history of the Senate, and unfortunately it has brought us to this point,” said McConnell on the Senate floor. “We need to restore the norms and traditions of the Senate and get past this unprecedented, partisan filibuster.”
The Republican move was new for a Supreme Court nominee, but not without precedent. In 2013, Senate Democrats eliminated the filibuster for most lower-court appointments and Cabinet nominees, because they said Republicans were engaged in widespread obstruction of Obama’s appointments.
In the short term, the rule change means Gorsuch will almost certainly be confirmed come Friday evening, giving the embattled Trump administration its first major policy accomplishment. The appointment of a staunch conservative such as Gorsuch will ignite the GOP’s traditional, religious base that was slow to support Trump during his presidential campaign.
As he traveled to Florida for a meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, the president reacted to the news of McConnell’s decision. Speaking to reporters, Trump promised that the lower threshold for Supreme Court nominees would not affect his future choices for the Supreme Court, should additional seats become available.
“No, it won’t at all,” Trump said before praising Gorsuch.
“Hopefully, if there is a second one in my administration — there could be as many as four . . . I don’t think the nuclear option has anything to do with it at all,” he added.
But some worried about the lasting impact of the changed Senate filibuster rules, even if it helps Republicans in the immediate future. Henceforth, unless a future Senate majority changes the rules back, a nominee for Supreme Court can win confirmation with 51 votes. That could lead to more partisan judges on both sides of the aisle, said McCain, even as he stuck with his party and voted for the rule change.
“I think it will clearly lead to more extreme appointments on both sides, and I think it’s a terrible mistake that we will regret for many, many years to come,” McCain said. “We’re on a slippery slope, no matter what they tell you. We went from the judges, to Supreme Court justice, what’s next?”
Senator Susan Collins of Maine, the only Republican senator in the New England delegation and a key swing vote for the GOP caucus that unsuccessfully tried to broker an agreement that would avert the nuclear option, released a lengthy statement explaining why she chose to back the change in rules.
“Unfortunately, there is so little trust between the two parties that it was impossible to reach an agreement,” Collins said. She backed McConnell in the end, she said, because she believes judicial filibusters are being used in an increasingly cavalier fashion.
Like McCain, Collins warned that the Senate could be heading down a dangerous path — even though she voted to for the filibuster elimination.
“If senators are going to address the problems facing the nation and the world, we are going to first have to address the problems facing the United States Senate,” Collins said. “I hope that all of us will reflect upon this profoundly sad day for this greatest of American institutions to consider where we are right now and what we can do to begin anew.”
On the Democratic side, lawmakers accused Senate Republicans of being hypocritical.
Senator Joe Manchin, a conservative Democrat from West Virginia who has publicly supported Gorsuch’s nomination, voted against the rule change. As Manchin pointed out, Republicans bitterly fought a similar maneuver that Democrats pulled in 2013.
“Every Republican senator joined me in opposing the rules change then, but now, they stand united to do exactly what they opposed,” Manchin said. “Frustratingly, both parties have traded talking points: Republicans say it’s about obstructionism and Democrats say it’s a power grab. Their shifting positions and hypocrisy is the one thing that unites them: Both times, it was simply about doing what was politically easy instead of doing the hard work of consensus-building.”
Both sides say they’re committed to keeping the filibuster in place when it comes to legislation, which is a time-honored tradition in the Senate — and what separates the body from its majority-rule counterparts in the House of Representatives.
Over the years, individual senators have always been able to use the filibuster to protest legislation they thought was objectionable, from the Affordable Care Act to an increase in the public debt ceiling. The longest Senate filibuster was 60 years ago, when Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina spent 24 hours and 18 minutes protesting the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
Astead W. Herndon can be reached at astead.herndon@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @AsteadWH.