I won’t think often of Mitch McConnell once he leaves his post as US Senate Republican leader.
But when I do …
I will remember the cheap partisan game he played by blocking President Obama’s decision to name a justice to the U.S. Supreme Court.
You remember, right. Justice Antonin Scalia was vacationing in Texas when he died suddenly in February 2016. Scalia was the intellectual leader of the conservatives who sat on the high court. A brilliant jurist to be sure. Obama had a right under the Constitution to select a successor.
President Obama paid his respects to Justice Scalia and then turned to the D.C. appellate court and nominated Judge Merrick Garland to succeed Scalia. Garland, by all accounts, was a serious judge, fair-minded and scholarly and, yes, a good bit more liberal in his judicial philosophy than Justice Scalia.
Not so fast, said McConnell, who then led the GOP majority in the Senate. The president shouldn’t be allowed to make an appointment in an election year. He said there would be no confirmation hearing for Garland. The Senate would wait for the election results, McConnell said. He took a huge gamble, as Donald Trump was a decided underdog in early 2016 in his race against Democratic Party nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton.
What happened? Donald Trump got elected, took the oath in January 2017 and then selected conservative judge Neil Gorsuch to succeed Scalia.
I shall be clear. McConnell acted legally. He had the right as Senate majority leader to block the president’s nomination.
However, McConnell’s stiff of a president from doing his constitutional duty still doesn’t pass this blogger’s smell test.
The tactic stunk to the highest of the heavens and that should stand as this partisan hack’s most enduring legacy.