Will Dems follow through on threat to filibuster Gorsuch's SCOTUS confirmation?

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D–N.Y.) announced yesterday that he intends to filibuster the confirmation process of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, picked by President Donald Trump to fill Justice Antonin Scalia's vacant seat.

Gorsuch's confirmation hearings have been largely uneventful, though Democratic lawmakers have grilled the would-be justice with tough questions regarding his personal politics and his opinion of several landmark Supreme Court decisions.

Even still, many commentators predicted before the hearings that Gorsuch would be confirmed, either by reaching the traditional 60-vote threshold or through invocation of the so-called "nuclear option" by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.), which would override the confirmation vote with a simple majority.

Kelly Shackelford, president and CEO of First Liberty Institute, called into "The Glenn Beck Radio Program" Friday morning to chastise Senate Democrats for attempting to invent a reason to oppose Gorsuch's candidacy:

"They have nothing really on Gorsuch. He has almost 3,000 opinions, 2,700 or so, that he was a part of — and this is the thing, Glenn, this is so funny when you look at this — 97 percent of his opinions were unanimous. 99 percent he was in the majority. So it's hard to make him into something crazy. And yet that's where they would want to fight and die over the filibuster? Because if they do, then I think the odds are great that even the moderate Republicans will feel comfortable saying, 'Ok. Harry Reid took out the filibuster (using the nuclear option) on the lower court judges. We're going to take them out on the Supreme Court. There's no reason to have this filibuster anymore."

Glenn has spoken out in favor of Gorsuch in the past, though he expressed concern to Kelly that Gorsuch would drift more towards the ideological center once appointed, as Chief Justice John Roberts has been accused of doing. Kelly downplayed these concerns based on Gorsuch's lifelong history of ruling based on his originalist understanding of the Constitution.

To see more from Glenn, visit his channel on TheBlaze and watch "The Glenn Beck Radio Program" live weekdays 9 a.m.–noon ET or anytime on-demand at TheBlaze TV.