Tag Archives: Mitch McConnell

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Response to Trump … it’s about what we should expect

Donald J. Trump’s supporters are pushing back on the intense criticism coming from the portion of the country — most of which voted against him in 2016 — of the man’s presidency.

I feel the need to flash back for a moment to 2009.

Let’s remember what a leading Senate Republican said at the time about the previous president of the United States, Barack H. Obama.

Mitch McConnell then was the minority leader in the Senate and I presume he was speaking on behalf of the GOP Senate caucus when he made a straightforward and ominous declaration.

He said his “No. 1 priority” as the Senate GOP leader was to “make Barack Obama a one-term president.”

Yep. That’s what he said. He laid down his marker early in the Obama administration. He didn’t stress enactment of landmark legislation, or working with the president to rescue the economy — which was collapsing when Obama took office. He didn’t propose any reforms of his own or suggest ways Republicans and Democrats could find common ground.

He said he intended to make Obama a one-term president. That translated into “obstruct everything he intends to do.”

Hmmm. It didn’t quite work out that way. Obama got re-elected in 2012 and finished his time in the White House with soaring approval ratings in every single leading public opinion poll.

Is it right and proper for Democrats now to follow the Republicans’ lead? Mostly “no.”

I’ve noted here before that I don’t wish for the president to fail. A presidential failure means the country fails and we all pay the price for that.

However, as the new president seeks to form a government — and he still has quite a way to go — my hope is that Democrats can find some common ground with the Republican president whenever possible.

The problem, though, is that Donald Trump has begun harping about the media being the “enemy of the people” while continuing to boast about his Electoral College victory. Enough, already!

Some positive proposals ought to be formulated and presented for Congress to ponder.

Until then, my Republican friends ought to just swallow the swill they offered eight years ago when Barack Obama was elected … with, I feel compelled to note, a far more robust majority than his successor earned.

legal news, national news, political news

SCOTUS fight drips with irony

I cannot resist commenting on the irony that envelops the upcoming fight over filling the ninth seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Donald J. Trump is going to nominate someone to fill the seat vacated by the death of conservative icon Justice Antonin Scalia. U.S. Senate Democrats are vowing to fight whoever the new president nominates.

For the record, I’ll stipulate once again that I believe strongly in presidential prerogative on these appointments. I believe the president deserves to select whoever he wants to sit on the highest court; I also believe in the Senate’s “advise and consent” role in deciding whether to approve these nominations.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/senate-supreme-court-fight-mitch-mcconnell-chuck-schumer-233194

But here’s where the irony covers this discussion.

Senate Republicans blocked President Barack Obama’s effort to nominate a centrist jurist, Merrick Garland, to the seat after Scalia died. They denied Garland a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. They said within hours of Scalia’s death that Obama must not be allowed to fill the seat; that task, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said, belonged to the new president.

Senate Republicans denied Barack Obama the opportunity to fulfill his constitutional responsibility. They engaged in a shameless — and shameful — game of politics.

Their response now? Why, they just cannot believe that Democrats might vote en masse against anyone Trump nominates. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer vows that Democrats are going to dig in against anyone Trump picks for the court.

Revenge, anyone?

Senate Democrats likely cannot do what Republicans did when they denied Merrick Garland even a hearing to determine whether he should take a seat on the Supreme Court.

Indeed, the court needs a ninth vote to avoid deadlocked decisions. For that matter, the court should have welcomed the ninth justice long ago when President Obama nominated Merrick Garland.

Ahh, the irony is rich. Isn’t it?

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Obama prepares to bid us farewell; I will miss him

President Barack H. Obama is getting ready to bid a nation he led farewell.

It will occur on Jan. 10. He’ll deliver a speech in his hometown of Chicago. What do you suppose he will say?

Let’s dispense with the obvious: He’ll talk about the economic crisis he inherited, and from which his policies helped save the nation from collapse; he’ll tell us about providing health insurance to 20 million Americans; he will remind us of how we managed to kill Osama bin Laden; he will tell us of a shrinking annual budget deficit and diminishing unemployment rate.

I am going to miss this man’s style, grace, his commanding presence and the hope he continues to instill in millions of my fellow Americans.

Has it been a hiccup-free presidency over the past years? Of course not. The so-called “JV team” known as the Islamic State has become a top-drawer international enemy; Russia has re-emerged as a global threat; we’re still at war against terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But I am not going to declare that this man has been a “failed president.” I am confident that history will judge him quite differently than that. It likely will judge him as a consequential president, if not a great one.

I hope he doesn’t forgo a statement during his farewell speech that reminds us of the obstruction that occurred almost from the very beginning of his presidency. The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell (in)famously told us in 2009 that his “No. 1 priority” would be to make Barack Obama a “one-term president.”

Republicans fought the Democratic president at every step. One of them shouted from the congressional gallery during a State of the Union speech that “You lie!” when he said that undocumented immigrants wouldn’t benefit from the Affordable Care Act. When do you recall such utter disrespect being demonstrated against any president? Never, right?

Barack Obama is going to give way to Donald J. Trump on Jan. 20. I am going to do my level best to keep a civil tongue in my mouth and refrain from ad hominem personal attacks against the new president.

I will continue to support the man for whom I voted twice for president. He shouldn’t disappear from the public stage. I do hope, though, he shows the restraint that his immediate predecessor — George W. Bush — has exhibited while his successor takes the reins of power.

In the meantime, I am looking forward with decidedly mixed feelings about his farewell speech to a nation that well might miss his presence on the national stage.

legal news, national news, political news

U.S. Supreme Court: a victim of collateral damage

Elections have consequences … as the saying goes.

Nowhere are those consequences more significant, arguably, than on our judicial system. Which brings me to the point. The U.S. Supreme Court has suffered what I would call “collateral damage” from the election of Donald J. Trump as president of the United States.

A nearly perfect jurist, Merrick Garland, waited in the wings for nine months after President Obama nominated him to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Sadly, Garland’s political fate was sealed about an hour after Scalia’s death when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declared that the Senate would refuse to act on anyone Obama would choose for the nation’s highest court.

It was a shameful, reprehensible display of political gamesmanship and yet McConnell and his fellow Senate Republicans had the temerity to accuse the president of playing politics.

McConnell took a huge gamble — and it paid off with Trump’s election this past month as president. Now the new president, a Republican, will get to nominate someone.

The New York Times editorialized Sunday that whoever joins the court will be sitting in a “stolen seat.” The Times, though, offers a pie-in-the-sky suggestion for Trump: He ought to renominate Garland, a brilliant centrist who Republicans once called a “consensus candidate” when he was being considered for the Supreme Court back in 2010.

That won’t happen.

Trump, though, could pick another centrist when the time comes for him to make his selection, the Times suggested. Frankly, I’m not at all confident he’ll do that, either. Indeed, with Trump one is hard-pressed to be able to gauge the ideology tilt of whomever he’ll select, given the president-elect’s own lack of ideological identity.

Scalia was a conservative icon and a man revered by the far right within the Republican Party. His death has put the conservatives’ slim majority on the court in jeopardy. But, hey, it happens from time to time.

President Obama sought to fulfill his constitutional duty by appointing someone to the nation’s highest court. The Senate — led by McConnell and his fellow Republican obstructionists — failed miserably in fulfilling their own duty by giving a highly qualified court nominee the full hearing he deserved.

Now we will get to see just how consequential the 2016 presidential election is on our nation’s triple-tiered system of government.

Will the new president administer some kind of conservative “litmus test” to whomever he chooses? Or will he look for someone who — like Judge Merrick Garland — has exhibited the kind of judicial temperament needed on the highest court in America?

I fear the worst.

national news, political news

Once ‘noble’ pursuit getting more vengeful

The late Robert F. Kennedy used to proclaim that politics could be a “noble” pursuit if its practitioners kept their eye on the public service aspect of their craft.

It’s gotten a lot less noble in the years since RFK’s time in the public arena.

Politics has become a contact sport. A blood sport in the eyes of many. We are about to witness it become even bloodier as the next president of the United States takes his oath and begins the work of leading the country.

Donald J. Trump is headed for the roughest ride imaginable. More than half of those who voted in this year’s election voted for someone else. There are myriad questions surrounding the president-elect’s fitness for office, about his business dealings and about the quality of the team he is assembling.

It’s been said there might be an impeachment in Trump’s future if he doesn’t take care of some of those business dealings that could run him smack into the “emoluments clause” in the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits presidents from receiving income from foreign governments.

Is all this to be expected? Sure it is.

Is it unreasonable to ask these probing questions? Of course not!

Vengeance can be most troubling. Trump will take over from a president who’s himself felt the wrath of those who opposed him at every turn. There was talk of impeaching Barack H. Obama, too.

President Obama sought to do some bold things, such as get medical insurance for millions of Americans; he sought to rescue the failing economy early in his presidency with a costly stimulus package; he continued to pursue terrorists abroad using aggressive military action; he sought to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court.

All along the way, his foes sought to stymie him. There were a couple of shameful incidents, such as when a Republican member of Congress shouted “liar!” at Obama as he was delivering a speech to a joint congressional session; there also was the declaration from Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell who said his “No. 1 priority” would be to make Barack Obama a one-term president.

The Democrats now are on the outside looking in at Republicans’ efforts to reshape the federal government.

It won’t be a cakewalk for the new guy any more than it was for the fellow he will succeed.

Memories are long in Washington, D.C., even if politicians who say spiteful things to and about each other can make up and join the same team — which happens all the time in the nation’s capital.

Trump’s team must know that political nobility is long gone. They’d better get ready to be roughed up.

As they say: Payback is a bitch.

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No select panel, but let’s get to heart of hacking matter

bbhcr1a

Mitch McConnell says he won’t appoint a select Senate committee to examine the impact of alleged Russian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election.

OK. Fair enough, Mr. Majority Leader.

But let’s not allow these questions to wither and die now that your fellow Republican, Donald J. Trump, is about to become president of the United States.

We’ve got some questions that need clear, declarative answers.

What did the Russians do? How did they do it? Did their computer hacking efforts have a tangible impact on the election outcome? How in the world does the United States prevent this kind of computer hacking in the future?

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/mcconnell-rejects-calls-for-select-panel-on-russian-meddling/ar-BBxmZzP

If the majority leader were to ask for my opinion, I’d suggest that we need an independent commission that doesn’t answer to Senate Republicans or Democrats. We formed one of those after the 9/11 attacks and it came out with some serious findings about what went wrong and how we can prevent future terrorist attacks.

McConnell’s decision to nix a select committee is at odds with many Republicans — such as Sen. John McCain — along with Democrats are demanding. They want a select panel that would be tasked solely with looking at this most disturbing matter.

The new Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, said this, according to The Associated Press: “We don’t want this investigation to be political like the Benghazi investigation,” he said. “We don’t want it to just be finger pointing at one person or another.” Schumer added: “We want to find out what the Russians are doing to our political system and what other foreign governments might do to our political system. And then figure out a way to stop it.”

McConnell wants to hand this over to the Senate Intelligence Committee. Fine. Then allow them to clear the decks and concentrate on getting to the heart of what the Russians have done.

Seventeen intelligence agencies have concluded the same thing: The Russians intended to influence the presidential election. The president-elect has dismissed their conclusion, opening up a serious rift between his office and the intelligence community.

Trump and his team are virtually all alone in their view of this disturbing matter. Congress needs to get busy and tell us what the Russians did and when they did it.

legal news, national news

Can the president go over Congress’s head on Garland pick?

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This would require some serious stones on the part of the president of the United States.

But consider what a legal scholar, Gregory L. Diskant, is offering: Barack Obama can appoint U.S. Chief District Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court without Congress providing its “advice and consent.”

The question for me: Does the president have the guts to do it?

Diskant, writing for the Washington Post, asserts that the Constitution has a provision that allows a presidential appointment if the Senate “waives” its responsibility to provide its consent. Thus, the notion goes, the president is within his right as the nation’s chief executive to simply seat someone on the highest court because the Senate has refused for an unreasonable length of time to fulfill its constitutional responsibility.

Diskant cites President Ford’s appointment of John Paul Stevens to the court in 1975. Nineteen days after the president nominated Stevens, the Senate voted 98-0 to confirm Justice Stevens.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obama-can-appoint-merrick-garland-to-the-supreme-court-if-the-senate-does-nothing/2016/04/08/4a696700-fcf1-11e5-886f-a037dba38301_story.html?postshare=6971479245651399&tid=ss_fb

President Obama nominated Garland months ago after the tragic death of longtime conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. The Senate refused to give his nominee a hearing, let alone a vote, saying that a “lame duck” president shouldn’t have the right to fill a vacancy on the court; that job should belong to the next president, according to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

“No Drama Obama” could go out — if he so chose — with a serious boom if he follows Milbank’s suggestion.

Given the obstruction that Senate Republicans have thrown in front of the president for nearly his entire two terms in office, it would serve them right if Barack Obama took the dare being offered.

national news, political news

No president can act ‘alone’

capitol-hill11

“I alone can fix it,” Donald J. Trump told us while he accepted the Republican Party’s presidential nomination this past summer.

Surely you remember that pearl of wisdom.

The comment revealed a tremendous ignorance of how the presidency works and how the individual who holds the office is supposed to conduct the nation’s business.

Did it matter to American voters who this week elected a new president? Not in the least.

The very same ignorant GOP nominee won the election and today is going to meet with the man he will succeed as president. Perhaps the incumbent, Barack H. Obama, can remind the new guy of a concept that appears foreign to him: teamwork.

The president-elect is going to get a serious crash course in civics as he prepares to assume the first political office he’s ever sought.

The founders devised a system of government that requires compromise among those who run it. Over time since the founding of the republic, we developed political parties. The system is now run by people representing two major political organizations: the Democratic and Republican parties. They differ on policy and principle.

The trick, then, becomes at times dicey. Politicians on both sides of the divide need to find some common ground to fix the problems that confront them. Sometimes they succeed; sometimes they fail. As President Obama learned early in his administration, cooperation wasn’t always a given as he reached out to Republicans to find solutions to the serious problems afflicting the nation when he took office.

The Senate GOP leader, Mitch McConnell, laid down the marker early in Obama’s administration by saying his No. 1 priority would be to make Barack Obama a “one-term president.” It didn’t work out for McConnell.

Still, the new president enters this strange new world (for him, at least) with some kind of notion that “I alone” can repair what he believes is wrong with the nation.

He’s got 535 individuals on Capitol Hill — many of whom have egos that match the new president’s — who will have different views of what needs to be done.  Moreover, they wield collectively just as much power as the individual who sits in the Oval Office.

Lesson No. 1 is as clear as it gets. Effective governance requires teamwork, Mr. President-elect.

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GOP looking to make Hillary’s service difficult

cruz

Ted Cruz has joined his Senate Republican colleague John McCain in declaring war on a potential — if not probable — new president’s appointment powers.

Cruz, the former GOP presidential candidate, says there is “precedent” for the Supreme Court to operate with only eight members. That is a form of code for saying that it it’s OK for the Senate to block anyone that a President Hillary Clinton would nominate to fill the vacant ninth seat on the nation’s highest court.

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/10/27/cruz-says-theres-precedent-keeping-ninth-supreme-c/

McCain was wrong to say such a thing.  Cruz is equally wrong.

Assuming that Clinton wins the presidency in eight days, the Senate Republicans are digging in as they seek to block any appointment the Democratic president might make.

President Obama already has felt the sting of raw politics in that process. Antonin Scalia died eight months ago while vacationing in Texas. Obama selected federal judge Merrick Garland to replace the late Supreme Court justice — one of the conservative titans on the narrowly divided court.

The reaction from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was shameful in its political nature. Within hours of Scalia’s death, he declared that the Senate would block anyone President Obama would nominate; he declared that the nomination should be handled by the next president.

Well, Mr. Majority Leader, the next president is likely to be a Democrat, too. That has prompted Sens. McCain and Cruz to suggest that the next president won’t be able to nominate anyone, either.

Who’s playing politics with the U.S. Constitution? Republicans keep insisting that Democrats are doing it. They are shamefully lacking in self-awareness … as the continuing vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court has demonstrated all too graphically.

national news, political news

No honeymoon for Hillary

hillary

Let’s play out how many of us believe this presidential election will conclude.

Hillary Rodham Clinton will become the 45th president of the United States. She’ll be the second consecutive history-making president, following immediately the election of the nation’s first African-American; she’ll become the first woman to hold the exalted office.

Will she be granted the “traditional honeymoon period” that Congress grants a newly elected president?

You can stop laughing now. I realize that borders on a stupid question. It’s also a rhetorical one.

She won’t get one any more than President Barack Obama was granted such a period when he was elected in 2008.

I harken back to what Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell declared in 2009, that his “No. 1 priority” was to make Barack Obama “a one-term president.”

Do you remember that? That was Job One. Front-burner stuff. Forget working with the newly elected president to solve the economic crisis that was destroying our nation’s well-being. McConnell’s primary mission ended in failure when Obama was re-elected in 2012.

Hillary Clinton is likely to face the same level of hostility — if not a greater level — from congressional Republicans, many of whom she worked with while she served in the Senate from 2001 to 2009.

The leader of the peanut-gallery jeering section well might be the guy she’s going to defeat — Donald J. Trump, someone who has zero public service history, zero commitment to fighting for the nation at any level, zero understanding of how government works.

Honeymoon period? Those days may be gone for the foreseeable future.