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Posted on 05/28/2019 5:58:09 PM PDT by jazusamo
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Tuesday that Republicans would fill a Supreme Court vacancy even if it occurs during the 2020 presidential election.
McConnell was asked by an attendee during a speech at the Paducah Chamber luncheon in Kentucky what his position would be on filling a Supreme Court seat during 2020 if a justice died.
"Oh, we'd fill it," McConnell said to laughter from the audience.
The Senate GOP leader has viewed confirming judicial nominees as his top priority and the party's best chance at having a long-term impact given the divided Congress.
McConnell used his official launch video for his 2020 Senate reelection campaign to highlight his work on helping confirm President Trump's two Supreme Court nominees, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch.
"What can't be undone is a life-time appointment to a young man or woman who believes in the quaint notion that the job of the judge is to follow the law," McConnell said in Kentucky on Tuesday, contrasting the long-term impact of judicial nominations with the GOP tax bill.
McConnell's position on potentially moving to confirm a Supreme Court nominee in 2020 is a contrast from 2016, when he refused to give a hearing or a vote to Merrick Garland, then-President Obama's final Supreme Court nominee.
The GOP leader said at the time that he was refusing to move on Garland's nomination to replace the late justice Antonin Scalia because it was a presidential election year, and that the next president should make a decision on who to appoint to the high court.
"The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President," McConnell said in a statement hours after Scalia died in February 2016.
A spokesman for McConnell told CNN, which first reported his remarks on Tuesday, that the difference was that in 2020 both the Senate and White House would be controlled by Republicans. In 2016, the White House was controlled by Democrats and the Senate by Republicans.
McConnell had previously refused to rule out filling a Supreme Court vacancy if one should occur in 2020.
“We’ll see if there is a vacancy in 2020,” McConnell said last year after Kavanaugh's confirmation.
McConnell indicated during an interview with Fox News that which party controls the Senate and the White House were crucial factors in determining if a vacancy was filled.
"You have to go back to 1880s 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's stance puts him publicly at odds with some Senate Republicans, including Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). “If an opening comes in the last year of President Trump’s term, and the primary process has started, we’ll wait until the next election,” Graham said last year at an event hosted by The Atlantic.
If the Rats controlled the Senate in 2016 they would have Confirmed Obama’s Nominee.
They sure would have, no doubt about it.
The Democrats would slime Jesus Christ if he were a Supreme Court nominee of a Republican president! I heard a Catholic priest say that at a dinner party years ago, and thought yup they certainly would!
Well good. But, while we wait for a Supreme Court vacancy, how about getting the great bulk of the CURRENT 137 Federal Judicial vacancies confirmed and filled THIS YEAR!
Which is why the Dems are keeping Ginsberg luke warm just long enough to last til the next election
Dem heads are popping like zits right now.
Good God Almighty, I think Yertle the Turtle’s ovaries just dropped.
It will be Defcon stratosphere chaos. The nominee better be crystal clean.
But it is consistent with doing the best thing for the country.
Sure looks like it. :)
Buzzie on deck, with two potential pinch hitters circling on the on deck end of the dugout.
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There’s a difference between a President facing re-election and the consequences of a decision, and a President with no further accountability “doing stuff” as he goes out the door.
Our turn-over process after the November elections is waaaay too long - especially without restriction of action during that time.
“Dem heads are popping like zits right now.”
I don’t care what they think. Our goal at this point should be to destroy the Democrat party and make them reorganize under a different banner. They are anti-American, on their best day.
I hear what you’re saying. Brett Kavanaugh was a clean candidate, but they decided to use the falsehoods told by Christine Ford to try to derail his candidacy.
Sadly we live in a world where, if a candidate for some high position has no scandal in their background, liberals will just make up stuff, and push falsehoods forward to create a scandal.
For ANTI-LIFER, Ginsberg sure does cling to life.
You mean vultures don’t you
If/when Roberts is impeached or otherwise removed due to FISA “irregularities”, we’ll have yet another opening to fill. Good riddance!
MooCowSki, Collins and Romney would be the problem here.
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