PALM
BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Vice President Mike Pence pledged Saturday that
Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch will join the nation's highest court
"one way or the other."
Pence
made the pledge during a speech in Philadelphia to the Federalist
Society, a conservative legal group. His remarks echoed President Donald
Trump's comments from earlier in the week in which the president urged
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to "go nuclear" and scrap
longstanding rules requiring 60 votes if Democrats move to block
Gorsuch.
A
least one Democratic senator has vowed to block Gorsuch's nomination as
payback for McConnell's decision to wait until after the Nov. 8
election to fill the opening created by the February 2016 death of
Justice Antonin Scalia. The Senate held no hearings or votes on the
Supreme Court candidate that President Barack Obama put forward.
Trump
on Tuesday announced Gorsuch, 49, a judge on the Denver-based 10th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals, as his choice to succeed the conservative
Scalia.
Pence
said Gorsuch had already met with 12 senators from both political
parties and is willing to meet with all 100 senators. The vice president
said a candidate to become an associate justice on the nation's highest
court had never faced a successful filibuster and "Judge Neil Gorsuch
should not be the first."
"Rest
assured, we will work with the Senate leadership to ensure that Judge
Gorsuch gets an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor — one way or the
other," Pence said. "This seat does not belong to any party or any
ideology or any interest group. This seat on the Supreme Court belongs
to the American people, and the American people deserve a vote on the
floor of the United States Senate."
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