Posted on 10/05/2020 1:18:42 AM PDT by MarvinStinson
Democrats in 2016 demanded Senate Republicans "do their job" and give a hearing and vote to President Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, in spite of it being a presidential election year.
Obama, then-vice president Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, then-Senate minority leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) and Senate Democrats ripped Republicans, who were in control of the Senate, for their decision not to consider Garland. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.) said the Senate had approved judges as late as "September" in election years, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) said the notion that Obama could not nominate a judge that year was "absurd."
Now the situation has reversed, as Democrats insist President Donald Trump and Senate Republicans not move on the vacancy left by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Trump has already announced he will soon nominate a justice, and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), who remains majority leader, said the chamber will consider the nomination immediately. McConnell said last year that if a Supreme Court vacancy came up in 2020 that he would fill it.
If Trump's pick to replace Ginsburg is confirmed, he will be the first president since Ronald Reagan to appoint three justices to the Supreme Court.
They should have had the vote and voted him down.
They killed Scalia to get that SC seat.
I can’t believe how close we were to losing this country permanently thanks to Odumbass and friends.
How the GOP managed to stall that vote still surprises me. It was the first time I saw some backbone.
That was the Democratic plan. The negatives would have been used against the Republicans for the next two election cycles.
Once you understand this, the rest is easy.
Like Borking Bork really cost them. Or Thomasing Thomas or Kavanaughing Kavanaugh. They’ve been trying to do another Bork since 1987, so there would have been no downside at all to doing the same to Garland. Just dig up dirt, real or made up, and run with it.
That was my point. The Republicans did not allow him to come to the floor because they wanted the Republicans to do the same that they would do so that they could use it in the future against the Republicans. The Republicans chose not to let that happen and refused to take the bait, and apparently did not suffer any additional consequences. In the future, I think they have learned is that there is nothing to lose by all out war against any democratic nomination.
That's why it is critical to keep or increase control of the Senate.
Another lesson is that Democrats can swim around in the gutter like Esther Williams to take out a judicial nominee, and nobody holds it against them. But if Republicans do anything other than glowingly ratify a Dem’s judicial nominee, they are never forgiven, even if they say or do nothing ugly.
Merrick Garland, who had a law clerk named Maggie... who is the wife of one of the conspirators in the Alfa Bank hoax against Trump.
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