The Unprecedented* Filibuster* Of* Neil* Gorsuch*

Neil Gorsuch will not be the first Supreme Court nominee to be filibustered. And the previous nominee to fill his seat wasn’t filibustered because the majority party in the Supreme Court refused to consider his nomination, which would make claims of Democratic escalation absurd even if the filibuster was unprecedented. As Kevin Kruse observes, this farcical river of crocodile tears requires all kinds of qualifications that render the general claim completely meaningless:

On behalf of all historians: If your claim that an event is "historic" requires more qualifiers than the runup to the World Cup, just stop.

— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) April 3, 2017

Mitch McConnell currently has a great version of this: We've never in 80 years* had SCOTUS confirmation** in an election-year*** vacancy****

— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) April 3, 2017

And lately I'm seeing a new one: We've never had a partisan* filibuster of a new** Supreme Court justice for ideological*** reasons.

— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) April 3, 2017

Further explanations of the asterisks here.

The claim about the Fortas filibuster, as Kruse goes on to elaborate, is particularly silly. It was an ideologically-motivated filibuster that was “bipartisan” only because at the time southern conservatives were mostly in the Democratic Party. The “partisan” distinction is substantively immaterial.

Of course, all of these historical arguments are completely beside the point. The only “principle” McConnell believes in is “Republicans will do whatever they have 51 votes to do.” The idea that Democrats shouldn’t respond in kind because of norms that no longer apply — let alone utterly specious “norms” that require one qualification after another — deserves no response but pure contempt.