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McConnell & Senate Republicans Go ‘Nuclear’ to Rush Through Trump Confirmations
When the history is written, America’s decline should be attributed largely to one man, and that man isn’t Trump. The most evil man in American government is Mitch McConnell. It was McConnell who took the filibuster from a seldom-used mechanism meant to ensure that minority opinions would be heard to a routine method of subverting majority rule. It was McConnell who famously promised to obstruct anything and everything Obama might do, irrespective of whether what was being obstructed was good policy, good for the country, or even if it had originated with his own party.
He's been at it every day, quietly destroying us. Now this:
McConnell has consistently broken the Senate to pack the courts. In 2013 he put up a blockade, refusing to confirm any judge the President nominated to the DC Circuit. Then of course, the stolen SCOTUS seat. Then nuclear option for Gorsuch confirmation. Now nuclear option again.
— Senator Jeff Merkley (@SenJeffMerkley) April 3, 2019
McConnell has shredded the Senate in his obsession to push ideologues into lifetime appointments. When history asks “who broke America?” the answer will be clear.
— Senator Jeff Merkley (@SenJeffMerkley) April 3, 2019
McConnell, in his latest move to seize power by dismantling the chamber’s centuries-old safeguards, was about to push through another vote to break another rule. But first he gave a speech blaming the other side.
For the third time in six years, the majority party in the Senate detonated the so-called nuclear option on Wednesday to unilaterally change years-old rules of the chamber with a simple-majority vote. This time, to work through a backlog of President Trump’s judicial and administration nominations, Republicans cut the time between ending debate and a final confirmation vote on executive-branch nominees and district court judges from 30 hours to two.
The change was a provocative step that reignited a bitter partisan fight over presidential nominations that has raged for a decade and spanned presidencies from both parties. Democrats dwelled at length over the blockade that stopped Judge Merrick B. Garland from ascending to the Supreme Court in the final year of Barack Obama’s presidency to angrily question how Republicans could complain about the handling of Mr. Trump’s nominees.
“There’s no other word but ‘hypocrisy,’” Senator Chuck Schumer said.
Mr. McConnell’s move Wednesday was intended to break the Democratic blockade over dozens of judicial and sub-cabinet nominations sent to the Senate by the Trump administration, and to appease Trump, who has been badgering him to take such a step for months.
Wednesday’s precedent opens the way for McConnell to speed up the nominating process for sub-cabinet-level posts and Federal District Court judges, appointments that represent as many as 80 percent of administration nominees. ....by limiting the time between cutting off debate on a nominee and voting on final confirmation, the Senate loses time needed to vet nominees..... represented an attack on institutional norms put in place to ensure full debate.
McConnell is the personification of evil.
McConnell has a history of doing things for short-term tactical gains, regardless of the cost. He did more than anybody else to open the floodgates to unlimited dark money in politics, famously declared his top priority was for President Barack Obama “ to be a one-term president ” and killed the Supreme Court nomination of Merrick Garland in 2016 by refusing to act on it. Between 2009 and 2013, McConnell’s Republicans blocked 79 Obama nominees with filibusters, compared with 68 in the country’s entire previous history.
McConnell enjoyed a quiet chuckle and laughed again when Schumer said he hit a “new Machiavellian low.” He laughed again after Schumer said it’s “a disgrace.” And McConnell grinned when Schumer said: “I am sorry, so sorry, my Republican colleagues have gone along with Sen. McConnell’s debasement of the Senate.”
McConnell then read out a 42-word parliamentary maneuver that jettisoned 213 years of wisdom.
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/03/us/politics/senate-republicans-nuclear-option.html