It’s grotesque that there’s no time to pause for reflection and mourn the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a singularly great American, because as you well know, we live in singularly grotesque times.
I’ll have much to say in the days ahead, but for now, with Mitch McConnell’s craven crewmates already bulldozing over her body in their eagerness to install a new Trump flunky on the cusp of a presidential election, I’ll simply review what many of them said in 2016, when they stiffed Obama nominee Merrick Garland for eight months because it was supposedly too close to a presidential election.
McConnell: “There hasn’t been a vacancy created in a presidential election year filled in 80 years…so this vacancy will not be filled this year. We will look forward to the American people deciding who they want to make this appointment through their own votes.”
Lindsey Graham: “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.”
John Thune: “Since the next presidential election is already underway, the next president should make this lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.”
Charles Grassley: “A majority of the Senate has decided to fulfill its constitutional role of advice and consent by withholding support for the nomination during a presidential election year…The American people shouldn’t be denied a voice.”
Joni Ernst: “We will see what the people say this fall, and our next president, regardless of party, will be making that nomination.”
Mike Lee: “We think that the American people need a chance to weigh in on this issue, on who will fill that seat. They’ll have that chance this November. And they oughta have that chance.”
Rob Portman: “I believe the American people should have a voice in this debate. This is a lifetime appointment that could reshape the Supreme Court for generations, and I believe the best thing for the country is to trust the American people to weigh in.”
Tom Cotton: “In a few short months, we will have a new president and new senators who can consider the next justice with the full faith of the people…Why would we squelch the voice of the populace? Why would we deny the voters a chance to weigh in?”
Marco Rubio: “I don’t think we should be moving forward on a nominee in the last year of this president’s term. I would say that if it were a Republican president.”
Ron Johnson (the Moscow mouthpiece who’s now quarantining): “In a very unique moment in time, eight months before an election where the American public will decide the direction of the country , why not let the American people decide the direction of the Supreme Court.”
Corey Gardner: “Our next election is too soon and the stakes are too high; the American people deserve a role in this process.”
Pat Toomey: “With the presidential election fewer than eight months away, it is wise to give the American people a more direct voice in the selection and confirmation of the next justice.”
But Trump’s cult doesn’t care a whit about hypocrisy, because it has no shame. The Machiavellian pursuit of power is both ends and means. Principles, real or invented, have the life span of Kleenex.
Will the Republicans (goaded by Trump, who has already begun to goad) rush to fill RBG’s chair before “the American people” are allowed to “weigh in”? Or, even worse, would a lame duck Republican Senate – doomed by a Joe Biden victory and a Senate blue wave in November – defy the will of the electorate and fill her chair in the interregnum between Election Day and Inauguration Day? If you think 2020 has been traumatic, you ain’t seen nothing yet.