Majority Leader Mitch McConnell shared uplifting words about departed Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Senate floor yesterday, extolling her rise from working-class Brooklyn girlhood to the pinnacle of constitutional law before downshifting into raw power politics, insisting there’s plenty of time to vote on her replacement before the election 42 days away.
He ticked off that John Paul Stevens went from nomination to confirmation in just 19 days in 1975. That for Sandra Day O’Connor in 1981, it was only 33 days and for Ginsburg herself in 1993, 42 days.
He may as well have cited confirmations from another planet; the last five justices’ confirmations have averaged 80 days. Merrick Garland, tapped 238 days before the 2016 election, never got a hearing.
President Trump, who thinks judges owe him loyalty and crassly brands justices by the president who appointed them, is poised to pick a committed ideologue, never mind a Congress and nation divided.
Which is why senators must wait until the election is decided to move on a Ginsburg replacement.
Four years ago, Lindsey Graham, now Judiciary Committee chair, said: “I want you to use my words against me. If there’s a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said ‘let’s let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination.’ “
“Your word is the currency of the realm here in the Senate,” McConnell said once. Of course, he never meant it.
