Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader and close relative of Grimace, has his big pitch for why voters should support Republicans in the 2022 midterm elections. If you think that pitch is “we will work hard to improve things for the good of the nation,” you have been asleep for a few decades.
No, no, McConnell says that he wouldn’t confirm a Supreme Court justice and made it abundantly clear that he thinks that, basically, you shouldn’t confirm a justice if the president isn’t a member of your party, period. That flies in the face of centuries of tradition in the United States but, of course, conservatives don’t care about tradition or what the founders actually wanted.
When this concept first came up in 2016, it was almost a surprise. Blocking the appointment of Merrick Garland (now the U.S. Attorney General) to the court was explained away as being because it was an election year and during election years you don’t do court confirmations, a thing that’s just obviously not true.
Four years later, he needed a new answer because conservatives had a chance to fill the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat and so it became actually, you do do confirmations in election years, if you are in the same party as the president.
Finally – albeit cryptically – McConnell has admitted that the real answer is that there will never be a confirmation for a Democratic nominee by a Republican senate. He suggested that this was something neither party would do, which is probably true now because of McConnell’s actions. McConnell said he would absolutely block a nominee in 2024 while, if there was a vacancy in 2023, “we’d have to wait and see what happens,” which means I will block a nominee then, too.
Image editorial credit: Phil Pasquini / Shutterstock.com
