Legislative filibuster likely to survive death of its judicial cousin

The filibuster, what's left of it, appears safe for the foreseeable future.

Republican senators said Wednesday that they have no appetite for reducing the threshold to move legislation from 60 votes to 51, even as they prepared to do the same thing for nominees to the Supreme Court.

And they are not under pressure from grassroots conservatives and advocacy groups to invoke the so-called "nuclear option" for legislation, even as such groups demand they do so to squash a Democratic filibuster of Neil Gorsuch, President Trump's nominee to fill a vacant seat on the Supreme Court.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell this week sought to nuke any suggestion that the legislative filibuster was in jeopardy.

"Who would be the biggest beneficiary of that right now? It'd be the majority, right? There's not a single senator in the majority who thinks we ought to change the legislative filibuster — not one," the Kentucky Republican told reporters this week.