EDITORIAL: A question of who will blink

So, after hours of grilling in the Senate, where does the Neil Gorsuch nomination to serve as a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court stand?

In the political crosshairs.

On one side are Democrats, lining up behind Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who is intent on filibustering the nomination.

On the other, Republicans have their fingers on the nuke button that would send the filibuster to the political graveyard.

That Gorsuch, though qualified to sit on the Supreme Court, was going to have a tough go with Democratic senators was a given. Incensed by Senate Republicans’ refusal last year to even give President Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, who also was qualified to serve on the high court, a hearing, there was no chance that Gorsuch was going to glide easily through the process.

But the tit-for-tat politics that have become standard operating procedure inside the Beltway are heading to a new level, one that may, once again, prove how short-sided our elected leaders can be.

No nominee selected by President Trump is going to make liberals happy, just as no nominee made by Obama was going to satisfy conservatives last year. And while Republicans successfully played a gambit — had Hillary Clinton won, they may have faced one or more high court nominees who would have been worse than Garland in their estimation — Democrats can’t hope to keep the court seat vacant indefinitely, especially after they argued how critical it was to have a full court.

If Democrats mount a successful filibuster and kill the Gorsuch nomination — basically, retaliation for the Garland nomination — chances are the next nominee will be someone they really won’t like, given Trump’s penchant for doubling-down when he runs into resistance. And chances also are that GOP senators would go ahead and press the button on the so-called “nuclear option” that would change confirmation of justice nominees from requiring a 60-vote majority to a simple majority. It wouldn’t be surprising if Republican senators determine that it is inevitable that the filibuster will go away and decide to go ahead with a simple majority on this nomination.

The Democrats when they were in power removed the supermajority requirement for presidential nominations other than justices, and that was a mistake. A number of Trump nominees they didn’t like might have been blocked under the old rules, which would have forced the president to make nominations that were more palatable to them. The filibuster is a device that gives the minority party a voice in the Senate, and its demise would be a loss long felt.

The question senators on both sides of the aisle have to ask themselves is whether this particular nomination is the one they want to draw a line on. With an aging Supreme Court, Trump may well get to make at least one more nomination, and Democrats have to know — as Republicans did during the Obama presidency — that they’re going to get nominees who are not their favorites ideologically.

The stakes are high for each side, and right now each is staring the other down.

It’ll be interesting to see who blinks.