- The Washington Times - Sunday, April 2, 2017

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer says it’s “highly unlikely” Judge Neil Gorsuch will receive enough votes during his confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court to overcome a filibuster.

The New York Democrat said members of his party became averse to the judge when he “refused to answer the most rudimentary questions” during his confirmation hearings last month.

“There was a seismic change in my caucus, and it’s highly, highly unlikely that he’ll get 60,” Mr. Schumer said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said Judge Gorsuch will be confirmed even if Democrats follow through on their threat to filibuster his confirmation.

Mr. Schumer, whose party changed the rules to remove the filibuster on executive and lower-court judicial appointments in 2013, said using the nuclear option here would be a mistake. He said appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court are important enough to warrant a 60-vote threshold.

“That’s why you get a mainstream — that’s how you get a mainstream justice,” he said. “Just about every — Mitch calls it a ’filibuster.’ We call it the 60-vote standard. Most Americans believe in the 60-vote standard.”

He called groups advising President Trump on his nomination — including the Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society — “hard-right groups with extreme, special-interest-oriented views” that naturally produced a nominee with an extreme view of the Constitution.

“The New York Times and the Washington Post, when they looked at Gorsuch’s record, one said he’d be the second-most conservative justice on the Court, only short of Thomas, and the other, the Post said he’d be the most conservative,” Mr. Schumer said. “This is not a mainstream choice. He’s way far over.”

• Bradford Richardson can be reached at brichardson@washingtontimes.com.

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