McConnell nukes Senate rules so he can install radical judges for life

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell spent years blocking former President Barack Obama’s judicial nominees.

Yet on Wednesday, he led the charge to officially change the rules he once exploited to be able to ram through Trump’s radical and often unqualified judicial picks in a blatantly hypocritical move.

Via arcane Senate procedure, McConnell, along with almost every Senate Republican, voted to limit debate on judicial nominees from 30 hours to 2 hours, allowing the GOP to speed through Trump’s judicial picks. Not one Democrat voted for the rule change.

McConnell and other Senate Republicans made the change after whining that Democrats were slow-walking or trying to block Trump’s judicial picks.

Republicans seem to have willfully forgotten their own tactics under Obama’s presidency, when they delayed Obama’s judicial picks to such extremes that they caused a vacancy crisis in the judiciary — all in the hopes that they could keep the seats open for a future Republican president to fill.

Let’s also not forget about Merrick Garland, President Obama’s unquestionably qualified Supreme Court nominee whom McConnell blocked from even getting a hearing, let alone a vote — which other Senate Republicans were happy to let McConnell do.

In 2016, they got their wish, and now are rushing to fill the more than 100 judicial vacancies they held open from President Obama’s term with bigoted and extremist jurists. Wednesday’s rule change to limit debate will help Republicans in that quest.

This is the third rules change McConnell has made since Trump took office. He eliminated the filibuster on Supreme Court nominees as well as Trump appointees early in Trump’s tenure, allowing these important roles to advance with a simple majority rather than meet the traditional 60 vote threshold.

McConnell has painted himself as a Senate institutionalist.

However, all he’s proven is that he’s willing to change the rules to give himself and his party more power. What a fraud.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.