Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell is accused of being a hypocrite because he would not give a Senate hearing to an Obama nominee 9 months before the 2016 election, citing that the newly elected president should have the authority to appoint the replacement for Scalia, yet now he is rushing to get a nominee who will be selected by Trump in just weeks before the 2020 election.
Yes, McConnell said what he said. The situation has changed four years later, and four years is a very long time in political discourse. The country is more divided than I have seen it in my lifetime. I would even say we are as near to an armed civil conflict as we have been since the Civil War. Uprisings and civil unrest are surpassing the Vietnam era. The two parties cannot get together on anything even when it comes to helping the unemployed buy a loaf of bread. Impeachment is threatened a second time by Nancy Pelosi. Given this escalated level of unbridled hatred, I would be surprised if either party would honor the rhetoric of four years ago.
Obama tried to get his nominee in when he had the nominating power in 2016. McConnell would not go with that because he had the veto power. Practically it would have made no difference as the Supreme Court nominee would likely have been rejected by a Republican Senate anyway, if he had been granted a hearing. It would have wasted a lot of time and rivaled the Kavanaugh hearing in political mudslinging. I suspect that was the real reason McConnell did not want to put the Senate through that spectacle. But that didn’t resonate honorably either, so he came up with a politically more correct reason. Shame on him for trying to be politically correct.
To let an opportunity to waterproof the Supreme Court’s conservative majority is a chance that likely will not come again for generations. If the Presidency and Senate flip, the next Supreme Court Justices will then be a four-five liberal to conservative mix. On the other hand, because Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch often cross the divide, this exposes all the conservative holy grail issues to the risk of reversal. To fail to secure the opportunity to solidify the conservative position would not only be stupid but sell out all the people that elected the current group of Senators. The next election may be a Democratic sweep. If the judicial branch also has the potential to turn left, it would guarantee radical changes in our form of government. Keeping the Supreme Court on the conservative side may be the only means that conservatives will have to stop the Socialists to radically transform the country.
Stupid vs. Hypocracy is the choice. Had the situation been reversed under an Obama, Clinton, or Johnson Senate, what would the Senate Majority leader have done? Hypocrisy may not be virtuous, but it is defendable; stupidity and failure to represent your constituency are not!