Elizabeth Warren’s past came back to haunt her.
Back in 2013, she was a cheerleader for Harry Reid’s scheme to ram through Obama’s judges.
But in the wake of this fight, it quickly dawned on her and other Democrats they made a massive mistake.
In 2013, Harry Reid changed Senate rules to allow for executive branch appointees and lower court judges to be confirmed with 51 votes.
That was referred to as invoking the “nuclear option.”
At the time, Elizabeth Warren demanded an end to Republican “obstruction” of Obama’s judges.
The Daily Caller reports:
“We need to call out these filibusters for what they are: Naked attempts to nullify the results of the last presidential election… Senators not only have the right to change the filibuster rules, Senators have a duty to change the filibuster rules.”
You can watch the video of Warren’s remarks below.
But after Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to fill Antonin Scalia’s seat, Democrats lost their minds.
Their radical base demanded 100% opposition to the nomination which they considered “stolen.”
When Justice Scalia tragically passed away in February, 2016, Republicans blocked Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland.
Republicans honored the Biden rule – named after then-Senator Joe Biden – which held that the Senate shouldn’t confirm Supreme Court Justices in an election year.
But the left-wing base of the Democrat Party was infuriated and demanded retribution.
So the Senate Democrats were forced to play the losing hand of refusing to allow the nomination of Gorsuch to proceed by denying him the 60 votes to end debate and move to an up-or-down vote.
This was a continuation of Democrat tactics in the fight over judicial nominees.
Back in 2003, Democrats invented the partisan filibuster against court nominees by filibustering Miguel Estrada’s nomination to the D.C. Court of Appeals.
In the Gorsuch filibuster, Warren gladly led the charge, and even claimed Gorsuch should not be confirmed because he failed to garner 60 votes.
It’s clear that @realDonaldTrump’s Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, doesn’t have enough support in the Senate to be confirmed.
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) April 4, 2017
But Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell used Senate rules to demonstrate that the Democrats actually eliminated the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees back in 2013.
Now Trump can confirm any conservative jurist to the nation’s highest court with just 51 votes.
With moderate Justice Anthony Kennedy rumored to be weighing retirement, or if one of the older liberal Justices retires, Trump has the chance to solidify a conservative majority on the court for a generation.
And he has Elizabeth Warren and the Democrats to thank.