As if there were ever any suspense, the U.S. Senate on Friday confirmed Neil Gorsuch's nomination to the Supreme Court. It was a major victory for President Donald Trump, who got the appointment that President Barack Obama deserved but was denied — another sign of how deeply political partisanship grips America.

A few hours after Trump selected Gorsuch on Jan. 31, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., stated flatly on Fox News, "We're going to get this judge confirmed." Gorsuch could order his robes.

Fox host Bret Baier twice tried to get McConnell to state that he would employ the so-called "nuclear option" of ending the Senate's filibuster rules for Supreme Court nominees. McConnell twice repeated, "We're going to get the judge confirmed," a non-answer that was, in fact, an answer.

McConnell invoked the nuclear option Thursday when he failed to get the 60-vote minimum required for consensus confirmation. He then moved to change the rule on Friday morning, allowing Gorsuch to be confirmed by 51 Republicans and three red-state Democrats who face re-election next year.

There has been much anguish and plenty of hypocrisy on both sides over eliminating the filibuster. Democrats started it in 2013, when they controlled the Senate, and ended the 60-vote requirement for lower-court judges and executive branch nominees. Republicans had been prepared to do it in 2006, when they controlled the chamber, but a willingness to compromise prevailed.

The Pew Research Center reported last year that partisanship has hardened across America in recent years: "These days Democrats and Republicans no longer stop at disagreeing with each other's ideas. Many in each party now deny the other's facts, disapprove of each other's lifestyles, avoid each other's neighborhoods, impugn each other's motives, doubt each other's patriotism, can't stomach each other's news sources, and bring different value systems to such core social institutions as religion, marriage and parenthood. It's as if they belong not to rival parties but alien tribes."

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., blames both parties for the intransigent atmosphere. She told us in a phone interview last week that, these days, "compromise is a bad word." She said her office gets countless letters, emails and phone calls and "none of them is asking me to compromise. There's no love for the middle."

McCaskill, another red-state moderate who faces re-election next year, was seen as a possible Democratic vote for Gorsuch. She voted no, believing Gorsuch "has a rigid ideology that favors corporations over people."

On the right and the left, "rigid ideology" is the new normal. Supreme Court nominees no longer need consensus. The filibuster remains for votes on legislation, at least for now.

Senate traditionalists say something valuable is lost when two sides aren't required to reach respectful compromise. That's absolutely true, and not just in the Senate.

REPRINTED FROM THE ST LOUIS POST DISPATCH