McConnell’s SCOTUS Manipulations
FRED WERTHEIMER’S WEEKLY NOTE | September 20, 2018
“McConnell’s devious Supreme Court manipulations are a grave miscarriage of justice that will not be soon forgotten.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rules Senate Republicans with an iron fist and no velvet glove. He is a disaster for the American people.
He first made his bones in the Senate by leading obstructionist filibusters to block campaign finance reform bills from the mid-1980s to 2002, when he finally met his match in John McCain, who broke McConnell’s filibuster against the McCain-Feingold “soft money” ban.
As McConnell said in 1994, “I am a proud guardian of gridlock. I think gridlock is making a big comeback in the country.”
Under his leadership as Minority Leader, there were a record 112 cloture votes to break Republican-led obstructionist filibusters in the 2007-2008 Congress.
However, after he became Majority Leader in 2015, his hypocrisy ruled supreme as he complained about Senate Democrats using the same tactics he had used for his entire Senate career.
The ultimate duplicitous conduct by McConnell has occurred in his dealings with Supreme Court nominees.
After Justice Scalia died in February 2016, Senator McConnell, in an unprecedented action, blocked the seat from being filled by President Obama for the rest of the year. McConnell’s claim that he was doing this as a matter of principle did not pass the laugh test.
When Justice Kennedy stepped down in June 2018, however, McConnell’s hypocrisy rose to new heights as he worked to jam Judge Brett Kavanaugh through the Senate and onto the Court. In the process, he has used the equivalent of a political tank to run roughshod over Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and her allegations that she was sexually assaulted by Judge Kavanaugh in high school.
While Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley mouths the words, it is McConnell who pulls the strings.
Thus, the FBI has not been allowed to investigate the matter as they normally would, additional witnesses have not been allowed to testify, and Dr. Ford has been warned by Republican Senators that they will be out to get her if she comes to DC to testify.
McConnell’s devious Supreme Court manipulations are a grave miscarriage of justice that will not be soon forgotten.
He has done great damage to the country and to the credibility of the Senate in his decades of obstructionism and his irresponsible “ends justify the means” approach to being a Senate leader.
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Fred Wertheimer is the Founder and President of Democracy 21, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that works to strengthen our democracy and ensure the integrity and fairness of government decisions and elections. See previous Notes from Fred here.
