Mitch McConnell Wasted No Time Being Human Garbage After RBG’s Death
Natalie Gontcharova
Fri, September 18,
2020, 9:05 PM CDT·2 mins read
Sen. Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell pledged on Friday to hold a Senate vote on President Donald
Trump’s nominee to succeed Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Justice Ginsburg had died just
hours earlier of complications from metastatic pancreatic
cancer at the age of 87.
Ginsburg herself said just a few
days before her death that she did not want her seat to be filled until after
the election. “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new
president is installed,” she told her granddaughter.
In the months leading
up to the 2016 election, McConnell refused to consider President Barack Obama’s
Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland after the death that February of
conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. But this situation — in which he’s trying
to shoehorn a justice picked by President Trump just 46 days before a presidential election —
is different, he says, making sure to justify his decision by reminding us that
Republicans are, in fact, in both the presidency and the U.S. Senate.
“Since the 1880s, no
Senate has confirmed an opposite-party president’s Supreme Court nominee in a
presidential election year,” McConnell said in a statement. “By contrast,
Americans reelected our majority in 2016 and expanded it in 2018 because we
worked with President Trump and support his agenda, particularly his
outstanding appointments to the federal judiciary. Once again, we will keep our
promise.”
A right-wing justice
would give the Supreme Court a 6-3 conservative majority, which could affect
all types of issues from the Affordable Care Act to Roe v. Wade.
So far, at least four
Republican Senators have pledged that they will not consider a Supreme Court
appointment until after the next inauguration, including Susan Collins, Chuck
Grassley, Lisa Murkowski, and Mitt Romney.
Democrats are calling
for the Senate to wait until a new president is installed to vote on a Supreme
Court nominee, saying that McConnell set a precedent with his refusal to
consider Garland.
“Mitch McConnell set
the precedent,” Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey wrote on Twitter. “No Supreme Court
vacancies filled in an election year. If he violates it, when Democrats control the Senate in
the next Congress, we must abolish the filibuster and expand the Supreme
Court.”
