McConnell says Senate Republicans won’t consider a Biden Supreme Court nominee in 2024, reiterating the position they took with Obama nominee Merrick Garland in 2016, The Hill reported on Monday, June 14, 2021 — and threw in some “whataboutism” for good measure.
“I think it’s highly unlikely — in fact, no, I don’t think either party, if it were different from the president, would confirm a Supreme Court nominee in the middle of an election,” McConnell said. (Emphasis added.) Technically, he’s correct; Democrats objected to Republicans ramming through a Trump replacement for Ruth Bader Ginsburg just 8 days before the 2020 election. But they objected on the grounds he used to block Garland’s nomination. All they were looking for there was reciprocity, and they didn’t get it.
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Look, the election-year b.s. was just a pretext, and everyone knows it. Republicans blocked dozens of Obama judicial nominees, and election years had nothing to do with it. They did it because they could. They blocked Garland, and rammed through Barrett, because they could — ignoring the blatant hypocrisy of it all.
Comity is dead. The GOP killed it. We’re in a race to the bottom, and if Democrats don’t want Republicans eating their lunch, they need to match the latter’s tactics. By now it’s obvious Republicans won’t confirm any judges they can block, except their own, even if it means holding a seat open for three or four years. Democrats should repay them in kind, not as payback, but to protect their own skins. If they don’t eventually every judge in the country will be a Republican.
From now on, no Democratic judicial appointees will be confirmed unless Democrats control the Senate. And that being the case, from now on, no Republican judicial appointees should be confirmed while Democrats control the Senate.
That’s not how it should work, but that’s how it does work, and Democrats can’t afford to acquiesce in it becoming a one-sided power play.
This is nothing new. It is as old as the Republic. An opening occurs on the Supreme Court in the forty or eight year of a Presidency the President can nominate someone. If his party holds a majority in the Senate the nominee could be the newest judge on the bench in as little as two days. Whether the nomination occurs before the election or after. If another party holds the Senate then the President nominates and the Senate likely disposes or the President sits down with the leader of the Senate and the Senate leader tells the President who to nominate. All that has happened in the past few election cycles falls into the norms. Just the actuality is exposed. McConnell is not going to block a nominee at this time or any until 2024. He can only block in 2024 if Republicans control the Senate, and it likely will not remain tied. It is possible the Democrats will control the Senate. This is all normal and how this process works.
If you’re suggesting this is the way things have always been done, that’s not true. In the past, senators of both parties voted to confirm court nominees, unless there was a good reason not to, and holding seats open until one’s own party could fill them wasn’t such a reason. We’ve never had this partisanship and manipulation in my lifetime until recently.