On the one hand, the incoming ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), says he has no intention of filibustering Obama’s Supreme Court nominee and that the GOP will not misrepresent their record. On the other hand, it only takes one Republican to object to a nominee to create a filibuster. I can’t see every Republican giving their consent to a vote on a Supreme Court nomination. Will Jim DeMint of South Carolina consent? My guess is that the Republicans will filibuster, but that the filibuster will fail spectacularly.
I saw Patrick Leahy on the weekend shows try to argue that the Democrats had not filibustered Samuel Alito. That was a lie. The Democrats did filibuster him, but they only got 25 votes to sustain the filibuster. Republicans will feel similar pressure from their base, but the outcome probably won’t be very different. We also have to consider the Republicans’ tolerance for hypocrisy, since they made a very big deal over the right for SCOTUS nominees to have an upordownvote. We know that their tolerance for hypocrisy is astronomical but we do have a thing called video tape.