How Mitch McConnell Can Quickly Push Through Trump’s Supreme Court Nominee

Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told a local radio station in an interview before Justice Ginsburg’s death was announced that she would not vote to confirm a Supreme Court nominee before Election Day.

Other top Republicans, including Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the Judiciary Committee chairman, and Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, have previously expressed similar reservations given their party’s blockade of Judge Garland in 2016, although it is unclear whether they will hold to their previous remarks. Mr. Grassley, the former Judiciary chairman, had said that he would not conduct Supreme Court confirmation hearings in a presidential election year.

Updated 

Sept. 19, 2020, 12:27 p.m. ET

“I want you to use my words against me,” Mr. Graham said in 2016. “If there’s a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said let’s let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination.”

But on Saturday, Mr. Graham, a loyal ally of Mr. Trump’s who is facing a more difficult than expected re-election fight, signaled that he has changed his mind since then, pointing to comments he made this year in which he said that after the bruising battle over Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s confirmation, “the rules have changed, as far as I’m concerned.”

The proximity of the election is likely to weigh heavily.

Ms. Collins is already facing the toughest race of her career in Maine, in part because of her 2018 vote to confirm Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Mr. Graham is also locked in a tough race in South Carolina, with one poll showing him tied with his Democratic opponent.

And the partisan wounds from Mr. Garland’s stalled nomination, the Kavanaugh confirmation and Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial are likely to fester even further with the prospect of another lifetime Supreme Court appointment, galvanizing the most fervent members of each party’s base.

Mr. McConnell, who is also up for re-election, counseled his members to avoid stating a position on how they would handle the vacancy.