The Roberts Court's remaking of America.

Mitch McConnell, the man who broke America

After McConnell justified his filibuster-ending "nuclear option" by saying it would be beneficial for the Senate, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said this: "Whoever says that is a stupid idiot." McConnell is no idiot. He is a clever man who does what works for him in the moment, consequences be damned. Back in 1994, McConnell lamented to the conservative Heritage Foundation that Republicans hadn't used the filibuster enough: "I am a proud guardian of gridlock. I think gridlock is making a big comeback in the country."

For the next quarter-century, he made sure of it. Back then he was fighting all attempts at campaign-finance reform and spending limits, championing disclosure of contributions as the antidote. But when the Supreme Court allowed unlimited “dark money” in campaigns without disclosure, McConnell reversed course and has fought all attempts to enact disclosure. McConnell famously declared in 2010: "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."

ProPublica's Alec MacGillis, author of a McConnell biography, "The Cynic," reports former Republican senator Robert Bennett's account of what McConnell told fellow Republicans after Obama's election: "Mitch said, 'We have a new president with an approval rating in the 70 percent area. We do not take him on frontally. We find issues where we can win, and we begin to take him down, one issue at a time. We create an inventory of losses, so it's Obama lost on this, Obama lost on that.' "

And that's what he did. By 2013, for example, 79 of Obama's nominees had been blocked by filibusters, compared with 68 in the entire previous history of the Republic. After Justice Antonin Scalia's death was confirmed last year, it took McConnell less than an hour to say that the vacancy should be filled by the next president. He called keeping Obama's nominee off the court "one of my proudest moments."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...12f1d8-1bbd-11e7-9887-1a5314b56a08_story.html

The facts speak for themselves. McTurtle is the consummate chameleon, saying and doing whatever is expedient in the moment to secure power no matter what he destroys in the process.

 

I'm starting to think you actually believe that. Or, like McTreason, you're just saying what is convenient at the time.

 

From your link:

"McConnell claims that the situations are different because, unlike today, in 2016 the Senate majority and the president were divided between the parties. Only the American people could resolve the difference."

Democrats have been beaten by the words of the Biden Rule and the foolishness of Harry Reid.

 

Are you really so bold as to claim the agenda of the Right is popular with the majority of Americans? Say it ain't so, Jack. As if the Right gives a rat's ass what the majority thinks.

 

You remain angry at McConnell's intelligence and skill.

 

There is no Biden rule, as you know. It's just another deceitful way to rationalize what he knows (and you know) was the wrong thing to do.

 

The cultural left is indeed the gift that keeps on giving to conservatives.

 

Your attempts to bait me are as transparent as Mitch's duplicity.

 

Ah, but there is, no matter how much Democrats try to wish it away. The really delicious part of our current situation is that all the tools McConnell used were given to him by Democrats.

 

I'm merely recounting the facts.

 

Thanks for the acknowledgement the Right's agenda is almost universally unpopular, leaving them no choice but to use wedge issues to maintain power.

 

It's a construct of the Right's making used to cover for what Mitch did. Surely you are smarter than this.

 

Do you also admire Trump's deceit? I thought not.

 

I certainly did not acknowledge that. A clear majority, for example, support the Bud Light boycott.
Poll finds most Americans BACK Bud Light boycott over its ...

Daily Mail
https://www.dailymail.co.uk › news › article-11987183


Apr 18, 2023 — A recent poll of 1,041 adults found 54 percent supported the boycott of Anheuser-Busch. +10. View gallery.

 

It's merely a plain recitation of the historical record. Mitch has been the honest man in this story.

 

I regret to say you fail to appreciate the difference between power and authority.

 

I voted against Trump twice. It is a measure of McConnell's greatness that he used Trump to secure his own objective, rather than the other way around.

 

I'm not deterred by the whining of sore losers.

 

What a silly thing to say.

Joe Biden: No Such Thing As the ‘Biden Rule’
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/03/biden-disclaims-biden-rule-slams-gop.html

Despite its supposed origins in the 1992 speech, Google Trends suggests the term “Biden rule” is of recent vintage. When Scalia passed away last month, Senate Republicans were still calling it the “Thurmond rule” after the late Senator Strom Thurmond, who blocked Lyndon Johnson’s attempt to elevate Abe Fortas to the chief-justice position in the summer of 1968.

At some point in the month between Scalia’s death and Garland’s nomination, they rechristened it the “Biden rule,” presumably after being reminded that Strom “All the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes” Thurmond was not an especially sympathetic figure these days, whereas attributing the rule to Biden would make for a more compelling narrative.

 

Or the truth, apparently.

Have a nice 4th.

 

Of course he denies it. He knows he handed a weapon to the opposition. The good news is that he probably can't remember the episode anymore.

 

it's a stitch watching some on the left acting as if their side is pure after we saw the russian collusion nonsense and two silly impeachments along with a 5 year effort to undermine Trump

 

You as well.

 

If the parties were reversed in this scenario I’m sure you would have advised Dems to not be proactive and seat as many Justices as possible, right?

 

Not anymore, and I'd argue based on that very amendment, it was never legal. EQUAL protection is precisely that... EQUAL. It means you and I get treated identically, regardless of what color our skin is, at least when it comes to governmental agencies. I'm not completely clear why it applies to Harvard, which I thought was a private institution, but it could be the very fact that race, gender, et al are federally protected classes, and it would apply to them for the same reason I can't open a restaurant and refuse to service people of a race other than my own.