Filibuster By Polipundit

Back when John McCain betrayed his party to form the Gang of Fourteen, the seven Democrat Gang members pledged not to filibuster judicial nominees, except under “extraordinary circumstances.”

But Democrats’ promises aren’t worth the ink they’re written with; so we have to take a headcount to see how many Democrats really won’t filibuster.

Assuming all 55 Republican senators vote for cloture, breaking a filibuster still requires the votes of five Democrats. Currently, there are three Democrat senators who have already declared that they will not support a filibuster – Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Ben Nelson (D-NE), and Mary Landrieu (D-LA). If two more Democrats join them, liberals can finally give up banging their heads against the wall to stop Judge Alito from becoming Justice Alito. It may drive them to drink (or, in Barbara Boxer’s case, Haagen-Dazs.) But it will do wonders for their sanity.

UPDATE: Senator Ken Salazar (D-CO), another member of the Gang, has decided to keep his promise. Just one more vote is needed to rule out the possibility of a filibuster.

UPDATE 2: And we have it, thanks to Senator Tim Johnson (D-SD), who probably doesn’t want to be Daschled.

This content was used with the permission of Polipundit.

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