Like Diogenes searching the streets of Athens for one honest man, today our country is searching the Republican Senate Conference for two statesmen willing to stand up to the divisive actions of a historically unpopular president and his historically unpopular and partisan Supreme Court nominee.
Two Republican senators can restore normal Senate procedures — for which John McCain pleaded and a handful of Republican senators claim to espouse — by announcing that they will only vote to confirm a Supreme Court nominee who can garner 60 votes in the Senate confirmation proceedings. The 60-vote threshold had been the normal Senate process for Supreme Court confirmation before this Senate term, until Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell employed the “nuclear option” by removing this historical safeguard (by modifying the Senate rules).
A return to that process would force the current president to nominate a more moderate bipartisan candidate (maybe Merrick Garland, Sen. Hatch?) capable of attaining 60-vote bipartisan support in the Senate.
Robert Jacobs, Cottonwood Heights