GOP win of Mississippi Senate seat will make it easier to confirm conservative judges

Washington Examiner:
Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith's victory in the Mississippi run-off election on Tuesday night will provide Republicans with 53 Senate seats, in effect giving Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., three votes to spare when it comes to confirming President Trump's judges.

With Democrats now in control of the House of Representatives, Trump won't be able to pass any sort of major legislation, meaning that the Republican Senate will be primarily spending the next two years pushing through as many judicial nominations as possible.

In the past year, with Republicans down to 51 seats, McConnell has only been able to afford one defection on confirmations. That in effect has left fence-sitting Sens. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Jeff Flake with out-sized influence over the nomination process as any two of them had the power to sink a nomination.

Going into 2019, Flake will be out of the Senate, and McConnell will be able to afford to lose both Collins and Murkowski and still have a vote to spare given Vice President Mike Pence can cast the tie-breaking vote.

The added cushion not only means that it will be easier for McConnell to get nominees confirmed, it also means that Trump and his team can have more leeway to nominate more conservative judges given that there is now less pressure to placate centrists.

Currently, there are 112 district court vacancies and 11 appellate vacancies on the federal bench. Going into this election, the Senate had confirmed 84 Trump judges.
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Trump has kept his promise to conservatives who elected him when it comes to nominating judges and justices to the Supreme Court.   It was one of the main issues that got him elected.  Reversing the liberalism of the courts and returning them to their intended purpose should be a key goal of the GOP.

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