The Real Question: Will McConnell Use The Nuclear Option?

Republicans are hopeful after Republicans’ sweeping electoral victories on Tuesday night. They have every right to be. Republicans now control the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the presidency. President-Elect Donald Trump has promised to enact a largely conservative agenda; although he strayed from those proposals throughout the campaign, Republican domination across the land should encourage him to move forward on those promises.

There is, however, one possible obstacle.

His name is Mitch McConnell.

Senate Majority Leader McConnell will likely have 52 Republican votes with which to ram through elements of the Trump agenda. The top of that agenda is replacement of Justice Scalia with a conservative. In all likelihood, the Democrats will attempt to filibuster any such nomination. That means that McConnell will have to invoke the so-called “nuclear option,” whereby he appeals to the presiding officer of the Senate – in this case, Vice President Mike Pence – to allow a vote on the new justice without a three-fifths majority necessary to shutting down a filibuster. A simple majority vote is then taken to decide the new rules, and the justice is suddenly confirmable.

It’s certainly questionable whether McConnell would invoke the nuclear option. That’s particularly true if certain left-leaning Republican senators like Susan Collins (R-ME), John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) decide not to support such a maneuver. Then, McConnell would be stuck – he’d have to go back to Trump and bring forward a judicial nominee acceptable to a broader majority of senators. It’s up to McConnell to keep Republicans in line.

The same is true with regard to the repeal of Obamacare. Democrats will undoubtedly attempt to filibuster; McConnell will once again be called upon to utilize the nuclear option. Will he do so? He hasn’t said. Will enough Republicans back him? They haven’t said.

All of this could foreshadow a serious break between Trump and McConnell from the beginning. Or, alternatively, it could presage a move to the left from both Trump and McConnell. In the best of all worlds, McConnell holds together the Republican coalition and pushes through some of the much-needed change Trump has promised to bring forth. But only time will tell if McConnell – a man many Republican voters thought was too weak-kneed in the first place – will stand up, or even if he can.