If Ruth Bader-Ginsburg or any of the other Supreme Court Justices were to keel over before the election, the Republican led Senate won’t hesitate to appoint a replacement.
Yes, Mitch McConnell admits, it’s the exact opposite of what he said when Scalia died. That was different, there was a Democrat in the White House then.
He has a clear message to whining liberals. They can scream all they want but that’s how it is so they better hope no vacancies come up.
Ginsburg says she’s not going anywhere
Everybody knows that it’s only a matter of time before Justice Ginsburg will be up for replacement. She thinks she’s good for a few more years, at least five, but the public isn’t so sure.
After all, you never know when you’re going to Wang Chung with the Grim Reaper. Any one of the high court Justices could expire any time. The subject came up on Fox News on Thursday.
Republican Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is the Senate Majority Leader. Back in 2016, he flat out refused to allow Barack Obama to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Anton Scalia.
When Fox asked him if he would do the same if it happened this year, McConnell said no. “If you’re asking me a hypothetical, we would fill it.” That may sound a little partisan, but it isn’t.
A totally different situation
When Scalia passed away in 2016, McConnell totally shut down the nomination process, refusing to even hold hearings on Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland. At the time, he asserted, “this nomination ought to be made by the President we’re in the process of electing this year.”
He spelled out that it wouldn’t have made a difference if Hillary had won the election. President Donald Trump eventually chose Neil Gorsuch.
The crucial difference, McConnell explains, is that back then, the Senate was controlled by Republicans while the White House was controlled by Democrats. Now both are controlled by Republicans. “Let me remind you what I said in 2016.
I said you’d have to go back to the 1880s to find the last time a vacancy on the Supreme Court occurring during a presidential election year was confirmed by a Senate of a different party than the President. That was the situation in 2016. That would not be the situation in 2020.”
