Acts of Hypocrisy From America's Greatest Monster

While trump is a nightmarish monster rampaging across the countryside, I would argue that Mitch McConnell is the greatest evil our nation has known since the 1800s.

Because McConnell knows exactly what he's doing: Obstructing and breaking the political system to where it favors only himself and his party, and to Hell with the rest of the world.

The most obvious sin Mitch committed in his tenure as Senate Majority Leader was to block President Obama's nomination for the Supreme Court in 2016, when Justice Scalia suddenly died to leave a vacancy. Mitch's excuse for SCOTUS-blocking Obama was "Well, it's an election year and we should let the American People decide who should fill that judicial vacancy" even though there was no written law or legal code proscribing such a move. The GOP tried pointing the blame onto then Vice President Biden, who during his Senate career in 1992 blocked Bush the Elder from filling lower court vacancies under the same excuse. Problem was (and still is), Mitch and the Republicans were the ones pulling the trigger on this particular scheme. They had no genuine legal excuse to pull that stunt.

As I wrote back then:

He's essentially arguing that President Obama no longer has any political authority to fill a Supreme Court vacancy. Even though - by law - Obama is still President of the United States until January 2017 when his successor gets sworn in.

Dear Mitch McConnell, let this amateur historian of the American Constitution explain a little thing: The American people ALREADY HAVE A VOICE in the selection of the next SCOTUS Justice. THEY VOTED BARACK OBAMA TO DO THE JOB BACK IN 2008 AND AGAIN IN 2012 TO DO THIS VERY THING. Nothing in the Constitution says the President should be prevented from doing his job the last year of his tenure. There. Done. Explained to you, you obstructionist bastard...

But it didn't matter in the end, did it? For all my hopes that McConnell would waver or that the voters would reject him and the Republicans in 2016, in the end that sonofabitch won: He got what he wanted in a trump electoral victory, which ensured the Supreme Court would remain under Far Right Conservative control.

So here we are, three years later coming into another Presidential Election Cycle, only this time the President Loser of the Popular Vote is donald trump and a Republican. So what does Mitch think should happen if there's a Supreme Court vacancy during 2020?

Via Russell Berman at The Atlantic:

With four words and a proud smile, the Senate majority leader this week confirmed what those who have watched him closely have long understood to be true: If a vacancy on the high court occurs in the election year of 2020, the Republican majority that McConnell leads would vote to confirm President Donald Trump’s nominee. “Oh, we’d fill it,” McConnell said in response to a what-if question about the Supreme Court during an appearance in his home state of Kentucky.

Mitch is grinning over this because THIS time if there's a sudden vacancy it'll likely be a Democratic-nominated jurist, giving the Republicans a chance to make the Court a 6-to-3 supermajority. Because THIS time he doesn't have to worry about Obama's legacy, only his own.

McConnell’s longer-term goal—indeed, his bid for a lasting legacy as Senate leader—is no secret. His aim is to install as many conservatives to lifetime federal judgeships, and in particular on the Supreme Court, as possible. He is well on his way to success in this area, having prioritized judicial nominations over legislation during Trump’s first two years in office. Key to the effort has been McConnell’s embrace of shrewd, arguably ruthless tactics. After blocking Garland in 2016, he didn’t bat an eye in swiftly deciding to nuke the Senate’s 60-vote threshold for judicial nominations in the face of a Democratic filibuster of Judge Neil Gorsuch a year later. In 2018, McConnell steered Brett Kavanaugh to confirmation despite multiple accusations of sexual misconduct  against the appellate judge; the majority leader held the vote weeks before a midterm election that could have handed control of the Senate to the Democrats.

This is all that matters to McConnell: Skewing as much of the federal system to a conservative ideology even at the expense of needed legislation and Congressional action. He has burned every in-house courtesy, he has rewritten every legislative norm, he has mocked the entire nation in this quest to leave a Far Right legacy for an era that will likely skew more Progressive Left.

Mitch is essentially making sure our nation remains in a state of social/economic/political civil war for the next 40 years.

This should be carved into his tombstone no matter how many times his family tries to repair the vandalism: The Deepest Pit of Hell Is Not Enough For Mitch McConnell.