McConnell pours salt in Democrats’ Merrick Garland wound: Yes, we’ll confirm Trump SCOTUS nominee in 2020
Contrary to reaction, McConnell has been consistent that there should be no SCOTUS confirmation in an election year WHEN THERE IS A PARTY SPLIT BETWEEN THE PRESIDENT AND THE SENATE.
Mitch McConnell’s decision not to permit confirmation proceedings for Obama Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland in 2016 is an open, oozing, and painful wound from which Democrats have not emotionally recovered.
McConnell just poured salt in that wound.
McConnell just announced, with a smile on his face, that if there were a Trump nominee for a Supreme Court vacancy in the 2020 election year, the Republican controlled Senate would confirm that nominee.
This should not have come as a shock. Last fall we reported how McConnell opens up possibility Senate would confirm Trump SCOTUS nominee in 2020.
The media and Democrat reaction is that McConnell has reversed his 2016 position on Supreme Court nominees in presidential election years.
CNN reports it that way, In reversal from 2016, McConnell says he would fill a potential Supreme Court vacancy in 2020:
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday if a Supreme Court vacancy occurs during next year’s presidential election, he would work to confirm a nominee appointed by President Donald Trump.
That’s a move that is in sharp contrast to his decision to block President Barack Obama’s nominee to the high court following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016.
At the time, he cited the right of the voters in the presidential election to decide whether a Democrat or a Republican would fill that opening, a move that infuriated Democrats.
Speaking at a Paducah Chamber of Commerce luncheon in Kentucky, McConnell was asked by an attendee, “Should a Supreme Court justice die next year, what will your position be on filling that spot?”
The leader took a long sip of what appeared to be iced tea before announcing with a smile, “Oh, we’d fill it,” triggering loud laughter from the audience.
In a major reversal, Mitch McConnell says if a Supreme Court vacancy occurs during next year's presidential election, he would work to confirm a nominee appointed by President Trump https://t.co/pbz0DHf3ZH pic.twitter.com/g4iRJSpLKF
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) May 29, 2019
The reaction from the right has been like, You Go Girl! (tweets via Twitchy)
McConnell basically tortures and abuses the Dems every single day from when he wakes up to when he goes to sleep. And there's nothing they can do to stop him. Lmao what a king.
— Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) May 28, 2019
Greatest of all time. https://t.co/vgSoQhvx9l
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) May 28, 2019
Grim Reaper ??? pic.twitter.com/OoE59Dn7l1
— Deplorable David (@LuckoftheDraw17) May 28, 2019
But on the left, it’s pure fury focused on McConnell’s alleged hypocrisy as to Garland:
https://twitter.com/Susan_Hennessey/status/1133528836820353032
McConnell, you miserable POS. You politicized Supreme Court Nomination process and now you are making joke of it. You are the person every American should focus on. Trump is a blowhard, but you are one who is actively working to ruin this democracy.https://t.co/8PwRBHgRFG
— Fred Guttenberg (@fred_guttenberg) May 29, 2019
https://twitter.com/tonyschwartz/status/1133735195880951809
A rational analysis, however, shows that McConnell has been consistent that the no-confirmation in presidential year was in the circumstance that there was a party split between the presidency and the Senate:
McConnell said this on March 1, 2016: “you’d have to go back to 1888 when Grover Cleveland was in the WH to find the last time a vacancy created in a presidential year was confirmed by the party opposite the occupant of the WH. So this vacancy will not be filled this year.”
McConnell said this on March 1, 2016: "you’d have to go back to 1888 when Grover Cleveland was in the WH to find the last time a vacancy created in a presidential year was confirmed by the party opposite the occupant of the WH. So this vacancy will not be filled this year."
— Frank Thorp V (@frankthorp) May 29, 2019
McConnell made a similar distinction in October 2018:
What I’m telling you is the history is you have to go back to 1880 to find the last time a Senate controlled by a party different from the president filled a vacancy on the Supreme Court that was created in the middle of a presidential election year. That’s been the history.
.@senatemajldr: We didn’t attack Merrick Garland’s background and try to destroy him. We simply followed the tradition in America, which is that if you have a Senate of a different party than the president, you don’t fill a vacancy created in a presidential year. pic.twitter.com/u1jm36EEbC
— FoxNewsSunday (@FoxNewsSunday) October 7, 2018
Charles Cooke has more at National Review, McConnell Hasn’t Reversed Himself:
The Washington Post joins a host of media outlets this morning in contending that Mitch McConnell has “reversed” his position on considering Supreme Court appointments in presidential election years. McConnell said last night that he would “fill” any Supreme Court vacancy that arose next year. This, apparently, is “hypocritical” given his refusal to acquiesce to the nomination of Merrick Garland back in 2016.
Trouble is, McConnell has not actually reversed his position, which was not that Supreme Court vacancies should always be left open in presidential election years, but that vacancies should be left open in presidential election years when the president is of a different party than the majority in Senate. McConnell also argued that his position was justified because Obama was a “lame duck.”
So Mitch has been consistent.
But I’m not sure it would work. McConnell still needs 50 votes (plus Pence as tie breaker) to prevail on a floor vote. He’d probably lose several Republicans in such a situation — and he can’t afford to lose more than 3 of them.
So there may be an impediment to McConnell confirming a Trump SCOTUS nominee in 2020, and that impediment would be Senate Republicans.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
The only hypocrisy is Dems trying to cry about fair play when they made an absolute mockery of proceedings during the Kavanaugh confirmation.
They are always looking for some excuse to justify lowering themselves over and over and over again.
The tweet from CNN: “In a major reversal…”
Wow.
Mr. clintack, IIRC, the garland nomination came about during the lame duck year of the obamster. That is much different from the approaching SECOND TERM re-election of an INCUMBENT President.
No criticism of you, or your comment, of course.
The Gang of Three being Romney, Snow and Murkowski?
with Collins and Sasse in the bullpen
Good. Now deliver Cuccinelli.
“So there may be an impediment to McConnell confirming a Trump SCOTUS nominee in 2020, and that impediment would be Senate Republicans.”
During an election year? Denying your own very popular POTUS with coattails for anyone who rises to challenge a RINO in the primaries? Brilliant!
Now, if we could just get Notorious RBG to cooperate.
the Bork payback is a B**ch
“You [McConnell] politicized Supreme Court.”
Short memory, or reflexive lying?
“He’d probably lose several Republicans in such a situation — and he can’t afford to lose more than 3 of them….”
And yet, he got them all in line to eliminate the filibuster to confirm Gorsuch. Every single vote — Flake, McCain, Murkowski… all in line.
And he got the Senate to go along with throwing out the “blue slips” tradition that Democrats were abusing to block Trump’s judicial appointments. And to change the rules on floor debate time that Democrats were abusing to block all of Trump’s appointments.
So I wouldn’t count on Republican senators playing along with the left’s attempt to change Senate traditions on them.
If there’s really a Supreme Court vacancy in 2020 (very, very unlikely), the Democrats will have to actually find a way to persuade GOP Senators to vote against the specific candidate. Invoking the memory of Judge Merrick Garland won’t get it done.
Of course they will. The Senate’s role is to advise and consent. Of course they’ll do that when they’re both from the same party. Of course they wouldn’t if they weren’t both from the same party. The Dims are either morons or liars to suggest it should or would be any other way.
McConnell should have said that since President Trump is obviously going to be re-elected, there is no reason not to take up his nominees.
Moron Garlick wasn’t going to be confirmed anyway. He has an anti-Second Amendment record on the DC circuit.
People are making it more complicated than it is. The Senate doesn’t have to consider any nomination. It’s in charge of its own business. Normally it does, because it’s unreasonable to leave a seat vacant for years just because you don’t like the president. But when it’ll only be a year, it’s reasonable to let the Supreme Court run with eight justices rather than approve a ninth whom the senate doesn’t like.
McConnell never said it would have been wrong for the senate to confirm Garland, or that it would be violating a tradition if it did so. Had 0bama nominated someone the senate actually liked, it would have confirmed them without protest. McConnell simply said the senate didn’t want to confirm Garland, and it didn’t have to, so it wouldn’t, and pointed out that no senate in those circumstances has done so since the 1880s.
Yeah, that Mitch McCommunist is sure one slick pol who knows what the “Important” Things are to apply his political capital, e.g., with the Southern Border laying wide open to hundreds of thousands of illegal alien cockroaches infiltrated with MS-13 Gangsters, contaminated with Third World Diseases all but eradicated in the USA, and Fentanyl laden Drug Mules, he has identified raising the legal age to buy tobacco to 21.
And, he finally got the confirmation process right by using his majority to shut down the Demtard’s abuse of the 30 hour debate rule, the Blue Slip, and other arcane Senate rules to do the job of confirming President Trump’s nominees after two years.
Hopefully, the Turtle will stay out of the business of helping defeat conservative Republicans by inteferring in the Senate Races of other states like he did in Alabama and Indiana.
Mitch McCommunist is no prize and definitely a Never Trumper who truth be known, had a part in the Phony Russian Collusion Conspiracy else John Brennan would not have been embolden to threaten him publically, i.e., https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2018/05/21/ex-cia-director-brennan-threatens-ryan-mcconnell-enabling-trump/
Mitch McCommunist certainly has no regrets letting Prima Donnas of his Republican Caucus rule the Senate with impunity to hamper the President while he stands aside looking stupid to stop it, e.g., Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney (the “New John McShame”), Richard Burr, the 12 that voted to deny the President use of the National Emergency Act to help secure our border.
Come 2020, #DitchMitch.