“We’ll see if there’s a vacancy in 2020.” That’s what Mitch McConnell told Chris Wallace when asked whether he would fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court in a presidential election year, should an opening arise. In 2016, McConnell insisted it would be improper to fill the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat with Barack Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland before the American people had the opportunity to weigh in at the ballot box. Trump won, Garland got canned, and Neil Gorsuch took the seat.
Wallace pressed on. “But you’re not ruling out the possibility since you’re the Republican majority leader, and there’s a Republican president, that you would go for and push the nomination of a Trump nominee in the election year.” McConnell barely flinched. No smile, no frown, no crocodile tears — perfect political composure.
“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,” McConnell explained. “That’s the history.” He’s right of course. And given the opportunity, McConnell would certainly fill any such vacancy, as well as he should.
Cocaine Mitch lacks his Democrat colleagues’ proclivity for childish, hypocritical sanctimony. At a time when each new news cycle offers some fresh Democrat hysteric, from cries of gang rape to tears of rage to calls to attack Republicans’ families where they sleep, Cocaine Mitch’s maturity offers welcome relief from the Left’s tiresome pomposity. Both parties act in their political self-interest. Indeed, that’s the purpose of a political party. But unlike Democrats, at least Republicans are honest about it.
Republicans stalled Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court because they could, and 136 years of American history recommended it as politically advantageous. The decision paid dividends at the ballot box. Likewise, Democrats tried to derail Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation because they could and considered it politically advantageous. If recent Senate election polls in Arizona, North Dakota, Texas, Tennessee, and elsewhere are to be believed, that decision may have backfired.
In any case, Republicans derailed Garland with an honest political argument, putting the question to voters to decide at the ballot box. Republicans shed no crocodile tears of rage. They did not impugn Merrick Garland’s character or wax poetic about the injustice of his nomination — just good, clean, bare-knuckle politics. Democrats opted for a different strategy. They waited until Judge Kavanaugh’s hearings had finished to leak a letter containing vague, unfalsifiable, frequently changing, thirty-some-odd-year-old allegations that Kavanaugh had groped a girl at a party in high school. Then they portrayed the dubious claims as near-manslaughter, demanded the FBI investigate him for a seventh time, and subjected him to over 32 hours of public questioning which focused variously on in-jokes from his high school yearbook, teenage drinking games, and the definition of the word “boof,” an apparent euphemism for flatulence.
After the Senate finally voted to confirm Kavanaugh to the Court, the judge’s various accusers and their Democrat pimps simply moved along. What would be the point of further scrutiny, particularly as the accusers’ claims unraveled? Kavanaugh is on the Court — time for Democrats to move on to the next battle. That’s just politics, according to the Left.
Both parties pursue their political interest, as they should. But Democrats boof on my leg and tell me it’s windy. How childish.