Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s statement that he would not fill a Supreme Court vacancy in the presidential election year of 2024 should he have the opportunity has elicited outbursts of hysterical rage from leftists.
Joy Reid of MSNBC became positively unhinged.
“Today, Mitch McConnell made something explicitly clear: A GOP-controlled Senate would never again confirm a Democratic Supreme Court nominee,” Reid said about an appearance by McConnell on “The Hugh Hewitt Show.” “In other words, if they regain the majority, they plan to pack the court with conservative justices in perpetuity.”
THE ABSOLUTE WORST…
Today, Mitch McConnell told radio host Hugh Hewitt that it was "highly unlikely" that, if the next presidential campaign was underway, he would bring a #Biden nominee to the floor for a vote. #TheReidOut #reiders pic.twitter.com/oN45CJ5zeL
— The ReidOut (@thereidout) June 14, 2021
McConnell, as reported by PJ Media’s Matt Margolis, said no such thing.
“Well, I think in the middle of a presidential election, if you have a Senate of the opposite party of the president, you have to go back to the 1880s to find the last time a vacancy was filled. So I think it’s highly unlikely,” McConnell said to Hewitt.
“A GOP-controlled Senate would never again confirm a Democratic Supreme Court nominee” is not “explicitly” stated anywhere in McConnell’s interview. In fact, he never said it at all. He didn’t even hint at it. He made the rather innocuous historical reference that it just isn’t done in a presidential year. Why is that so hard for Reid and other Democrats, who are having a cow over McConnell’s statement, to understand?
Of course, the idea of anyone in Congress having that kind of power “in perpetuity” is a bizarrely stupid thing to say. But she makes more money than me so I guess she’s right. If there’s one thing we’ve learned about America it’s that nothing is “in perpetuity.” I remember when it looked like the Republicans would never lose another presidential election. Democrats thought the same thing in the 1930s. The only constant about America is that nothing stays the same.
“What McConnell is doing is undemocratic. The Bible might even call it wickedness in high places, AKA evil,” Reid said after playing a clip of McConnell’s radio interview. “What he’s also doing is glibly taunting Democrats, daring them to do something, anything.”
What does Reid want Democrats to do? Create their own vacancy on the Supreme Court? Liberals have been trying to age-shame Justice William Breyer, who is 82 years old, into retiring. Breyer says he’s not going anywhere.
“Certainly feels good to yell online about this, but the only audience that really matters is Stephen Breyer, [Sen. Joe Manchin], [Sen. Kyrsten Sinema], and a handful of other Senate Dems who are hiding behind them,” added former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau, referring to two Democratic senators who have spoken out against eliminating the filibuster. “Anyone got a plan to persuade that crew?”
In other words, no Supreme Court candidate acceptable to the radicals would stand a chance of being confirmed when Manchin and Sinema have to go home and explain to the folks in two of the most conservative states in the union why they voted to confirm a far-left judge.
“Justice Breyer is playing a reckless and irresponsible gamble with the future of hundreds of millions of people,” proclaimed commentator Matt Yglesias, while Mother Jones magazine’s Washington bureau chief David Corn warned that “Justice Breyer ought to learn from the RBG and Garland precedents.”
McConnell blocking the Garland nomination was standard political fare, nothing radical about it. By the time of Justice Scalia’s death in February 2016, the presidential contest was well underway. It would have broken a 136-year-old precedent just to get the Democrats to stop screaming about it.
Joy Reid and other hysterical liberals need to get a grip.
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