You lost me, McCain, a long time ago, but this just really hurts:
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) suggested Monday that the Republican party’s months-long refusal to fill a vacant seat on the Supreme Court could extend into the next administration if Hillary Clinton is elected president.
"I promise you that we will be united against any Supreme Court nominee that Hillary Clinton, if she were president, would put up," McCain said on WPHT Philadelphia radio in an interview first flagged by CNN. "I promise you. This is where we need the majority.”
McCain essentially promised that the Republicans in the Senate will not uphold their oath of office to the Constitution.
He promised to put party partisanship ahead of the needs of the United States to have judicial offices filled in order to ensure our legal system is working.
He promised to ignore the constitutional powers of the President to nominate people to fill vacancies in the court system. He promised to ignore the reality that a President Clinton would win election with a sizable number of American voters.
He promised that if Hillary Clinton wins with lets say 60 million votes to lets say 50 million Trump votes, he and his fellow Republicans will tell those 60 million voters that their vote did not ever count, that their choice wasn't legitimate, that they will never listen to or respect those voters.
He promised to continue the obstruction that this current Republican-controlled Senate has been carrying on for almost a year now, refusing to even LISTEN to Supreme Court nominee Garland, operating on a laughable and possibly illegal argument that the Senate should "hold off" on allowing a lame-duck President during his last year in office from filling any vacancies: That the Senate should "respect the wishes of the voters during an election year." Yet if those voters go with Clinton, well they'll just ignore THIS YEAR'S promise and move on to this new promise of NEVER advising and consenting to a Democratic nominee ever again.
That's what this promise is about: McCain is laying out in public the truth that the Republican Party will never accept any Democratic President as legitimate, no matter how many people vote for that Democrat, no matter how the Constitution requires them to at least respect the Office of the Presidency.
This is absolute partisanship. McCain and his fellow Republican Senators are kicking their Constitution duties into the dumpster. It won't matter if Hillary wins by three percent or double-digits. The Republicans in Congress will obstruct her for as long as they possibly can.
THIS is why I've been screaming for the last 8-10 years to never vote Republican. Doesn't matter the office, if it's Dog Catcher or State legislator or US Congress or the Senate or President. This is the attitude of the entire GOP: THEY must rule or else everything will be in ruins.
THIS is why it's just as important for people to get out the vote to kick every Republican out of every elected office. It's not just the Presidency at stake, America: EVERY office needs purging of obstructionist Republicans who WILL NOT DO THEIR JOBS.
Every Republican Senator up for election this cycle needs to lose. Every Republican Congresscritter up for election this 2016 needs to lose, to hell with their gerrymandered safe zones. If the GOP retains majority control of the Senate, we will never see ANY vacancy - not on the Courts, not in the Cabinet - filled as required by the Constitution. If the GOP retains majority control of the House, we will never see ANY sane federal budget and will likely see series of government shutdowns by a Far Right Congress insisting on their godless tax cuts for the super-rich.
You wanna know why government's not working? JUST LISTEN TO THE REPUBLICANS. They will tell you: THEY DON'T WANT IT TO WORK. They would rather let it rust away, block every fix, block every qualified candidate. They would rather let the nation suffer for their self-serving needs than compromise or do their jobs.
For the LOVE OF GOD, stop voting Republican. They sure as hell have not earned your vote.
8 comments:
State legislatures especially. If we can turn enough of them around by 2020, we get to draw the districts, or even better, appoint non-partisan commissions to do it, like we did here in California.
-Doug in Oakland
Well, McCain is in a tough re-election fight and had to throw some red meat to the foaming-at-the-mouth troglodyte voting bloc, and he did walk back the statement somewhat later on, but nevertheless it's sad to see this. McCain has always seemed to have more decency and integrity than the rest of them.
Still, this statement is getting plenty of publicity. Let's hope it motivates our voters to turn out for Democratic Senate candidates (and for everything else, of course).
Speaking of which, there is a big push in the works to address the problem of gerrymandering which gives the Republicans such an unfair advantage in House races and state legislatures. It won't be able to produce actual benefits until the next redistricting in 2020, but at least they're starting to work on the problem now.
Some states are trying to pass referenda - amendments to their constitutions - to restrict the district map-making to reduce gerrymandering. it's tricky - even in Florida they can't really get the districts done logically because they're still trying to create minority districts for the VRA requirements - but if they can reduce it back down to 50-50 odds of fair districts it'll be worth it.
An interesting side effect of this election cycle is the overwhelming importance of the women's vote. The Republicans have been so desperate to gerrymander - and voter suppress - by ethnic lines that they exposed themselves to a voting bloc that goes beyond ethnicity (and can't be segregated by gerrymander). All those "safe" mostly-white districts are now questionable due to women voters who have a lot of angry reasons to vote AGAINST Republicans again.
Inasmuch as the Constitution was never signed, nor agreed to, by anybody, as a contract, and therefore never bound anybody, and is now binding upon nobody; and is, moreover, such an one as no people can ever hereafter be expected to consent to, except as they may be forced to do so at the point of the bayonet, it is perhaps of no importance what its true legal meaning, as a contract, is. Nevertheless, the writer thinks it proper to say that, in his opinion, the Constitution is no such instrument as it has generally been assumed to be; but that by false interpretations, and naked usurpations, the government has been made in practice a very widely, and almost wholly, different thing from what the Constitution itself purports to authorize. He has heretofore written much, and could write much more, to prove that such is the truth. But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain — that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist. ~ Lysander Spooner
Ed, I'm not too sure where you're going with this quote, but that first part "The Constitution was never signed, nor agreed to, by anybody, as a contract..." um I vaguely recall all of the original colony/states holding Ratifying Conventions to agree to that Constitution as a legally binding contract for a federalist government. This was all back in 1787 or so, so granted I wasn't there personally to note it, but all the history books were pretty sure it happened. So yeah, WE HAVE A CONSTITUTION AND OUR GOVERNMENT - and its elected officials - IS BOUND BY OATH TO SERVE IT.
Oh, and from a brief review of Lysander Spooner's bio, he's an anti-government libertarian flake... wait, he was also UNITARIAN?!?! ...sigh, this is what my church gets for having an open door policy for assholes...
So if its all so terrible, do your self in and be done with it all.
oh
my
god
plantmeister is totally right and i need to do myself in oh the horror the horror blam blam argh a touch i do confess i fear i breathe my last
...
it's a good thing my chronic depression can still allow me a level of sarcasm to handle this BS.
Just to note, I'm discovering to my real horror that the Unitarians do not have their own private college like the Lutherans, Catholics, or evangelicals do. :(
Okay, who wants to start an endowment for a UUA college somewhere between Virginia and Pennsylvania? I think Massachusetts will be a little too far north, let's aim for someplace centralized on the Atlantic coast.
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