HOLY F%$**&G S##T! THIS BLOGGER IS GOING ON VACATION TOMORROW; BUT I HAVE TO POST ABOUT THE GROTESQUE HYPOCRISY OF REPUBLICANS IN THE SENATE BEFORE I GO.
PRESSED BY DICTATOR DON TO ACT, THEY ARE GOING TO TRY TO FILL THE SEAT
ON THE SUPREME COURT LEFT OPEN BY THE DEATH OF JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBERG.
(BY THE WAY, AS THE CONSTITUTION READS, THEY SHOULD HAVE THE CHANCE.)
AND I’M SURE YOU REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENED WHEN JUSTICE MERRICK GARLAND WAS
SWORN IN….
OH, WAIT....
9/20/20:
Apparently, Republicans in the U.S. Senate are suffering from an attack of mass
amnesia.
Now that they have a chance to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court,
they are unable to remember what they said in 2016, when President Obama
nominated Merrick Garland for the seat left open by the death of Chief Justice
Anton Scalia.
To wit, a list compiled by my friend Constance Ida:
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas): “It has been 80 years since a Supreme Court vacancy was nominated and confirmed in an election year. There is a long tradition that you don’t do this in an election year.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.): “If an opening comes in the last year of President Trump’s term, and the primary process has started, we’ll wait to the next election.”
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.): “I don’t think we should be moving on a nominee in the last year of this president’s term - I would say that if it was a Republican president.”
Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.): “The very balance of our nation’s highest court is in serious jeopardy. As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I will do everything in my power to encourage the president and Senate leadership not to start this process until we hear from the American people.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa): “A lifetime appointment that could dramatically impact individual freedoms and change the direction of the court for at least a generation is too important to get bogged down in politics. The American people shouldn’t be denied a voice.”
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.): “The campaign is already under way. It is essential to the institution of the Senate and to the very health of our republic to not launch our nation into a partisan, divisive confirmation battle during the very same time the American people are casting their ballots to elect our next president.”
Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.): “In this election year, the American people will have an opportunity to have their say in the future direction of our country. For this reason, I believe the vacancy left open by Justice Antonin Scalia should not be filled until there is a new president.”
Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.): “The Senate should not confirm a new Supreme Court justice until we have a new president.”
Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Col.): “I think we’re too close to the election. The president who is elected in November should be the one who makes this decision.”
Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio): “I believe the best thing for the country is to trust the American people to weigh in on who should make a lifetime appointment that could reshape the Supreme Court for generations. This wouldn’t be unusual. It is common practice for the Senate to stop acting on lifetime appointments during the last year of a presidential term, and it’s been nearly 80 years since any president was permitted to immediately fill a vacancy that arose in a presidential election year.”
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.): “I strongly agree that the American people should decide the future direction of the Supreme Court by their votes for president and the majority party in the U.S. Senate.”
March 2016: “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.”
(The next swearing in of a president is at that point ten months away.)
*
RBG: R.I.P.
ALLOW ME, then, to simply repost what I wrote last summer, when there were hints Justice Ginsberg’s health might force her to step down from the high court.
6/17/19: Sen. “Milksop” Mitch McConnell makes it clear. He’s not that interested in the U.S. Constitution.
You may recall that in 2016, McConnell said he would not allow a Senate confirmation vote on Judge Merrick Garland, President Obama’s pick for a vacant seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. Obama was a “lame duck president.” His pick for the court came too close in time (March 16, 2016) to the presidential election. Milksop wasn’t going to allow a “lame duck” to fill a seat, even though the Constitution makes no exceptions, when filling judicial positions, for length of time left in a president’s term.
Obama had ten months, four days, remaining in the White House.
“The American people are perfectly capable [emphasis added] of having their say on this issue,” McConnell insisted. “So let’s give them a voice. Let’s let the American people decide. The Senate will appropriately revisit the matter when it considers the qualifications of the nominee the next president nominates, whoever that might be.”
What happened next? The American people did decide. The people gave Hillary Clinton 65.8 million votes. The people gave Donald Trump 63 million votes.
The Electoral College gave Trump the win—as per the U.S. Constitution—but Milksop Mitch had never said, “Let’s give the Electoral College a voice.”
The next election, in 2018, was a rout, with the people giving Democrats 59 million votes vs. 50.3 million for Republicans.
So, the people had spoken. Mitch plugged his ears. Now he says if a vacancy opens on the U.S. Supreme Court in 2020, he’ll allow Trump to nominate a person to fill it and Milksop will be sure his choice gets a vote.
“Lame duck” status won’t matter. If Ruth Bader Ginsburg retires from the Court on the morning of January 19, 2020, Trump will nominate son Eric to fill the vacancy and Milksop Mitch will hold hearings and a vote that afternoon.
Trump could nominate a ventriloquist dummy to sit on the highest court and GOP senators would vote for the dummy.
McConnell and the Republicans control the U.S. Senate because each state, no matter its population, gets two votes—again as the U.S. Constitution intended. The GOP picked up a pair of seats in the 2018 elections.
Still, the people of the entire country spoke in 2018. Mitch hears only the “people” of certain states.
And let’s remember what other leading Republicans said in 2016:
Sen. Charles Grassley, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee: “The American people shouldn’t be denied a voice.”
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan: “We should let the American people decide the direction of the court.”
Sen. John Cornyn:
At this critical juncture in our
nation’s history, Texans and the American people deserve to have a say
in the selection of the next lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.
The only way to empower the
American people and ensure they have a voice is for the next President
to make the nomination to fill this vacancy.
Sen. James Inhofe:
Sens. Barack Obama, Joe Biden,
Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid have all made statements that the
Senate does not have to confirm presidential nominations in an election year. I
will oppose this nomination as I firmly believe we must let the people
decide the Supreme Court’s future.
Fair enough, to quote Democrats to support the case; but McConnell, Grassley, Ryan, Cornyn and Inhofe were arguing that the people would have to have a voice in the coming election.
Now, Milksop is arguing that the voice that counts was the Ghost of Elections Past, which smacks of craven hypocrisy.
Postscript: In an interview on June 24, Trump owns the hypocrisy. Screw the voice of the people! Would he pick a replacement for an opening on the highest court next year? “It depends,” he says. “I mean, we have the Senate. We have a great Senate. We have great people. If we could get him approved, I would definitely do it. No, I’d do it a lot sooner than that. I’d do it. If there were three days left, I’d put somebody up hoping that I could get ’em done in three days, OK?”
Sure, if your goal is an increasingly authoritarian state.
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