McConnell Signals GOP Controlled Senate Would Block Biden’s Supreme Court Pick In 2024
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell indicated Monday that if Republicans get control of the Senate in 2024, he would block a Supreme Court nominee from President Biden, just as he did following the death of late Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016.
In an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, McConnell, R-Ky., made the remark. The statement comes after McConnell’s controversial decision last year to go through with the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett less than two weeks before Election Day.
“I think in the middle of a presidential election, if you have a Senate of the opposite party of the president, you have to go back to the 1880s to find the last time a vacancy was filled,” McConnell told Hewitt.
“So I think it’s highly unlikely. In fact, no, I don’t think either party if it controlled, if it were different from the president, would confirm a Supreme Court nominee in the middle of an election. What was different in 2020 was we were of the same party as the president.”McConnell added.
Indeed, as early as February 22, 2016, McConnell said, “the Senate has not filled a vacancy arising in an election year when there was divided government since 1888, almost 130 years ago.”
As a result, McConnell argues, Republicans were being consistent when they confirmed Barrett after blocking the Supreme Court nominee of now-Attorney General Merrick Garland in 2016.
Republicans, on the other hand, have been accused of blatant hypocrisy by Democrats for confirming a Supreme Court judge during an election year in 2020 after rejecting to do so in 2016.
When Barrett was nominated, then-Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said, “Let the record show that tonight, the Republican Senate majority decided to thwart the will of the people and confirm a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court in the middle of a presidential election, after a more than 60 million Americans have voted,”
“And let the record show that tonight, the Republican majority will make a mockery of its own stated principle — that the American people deserve a voice in the selection of Supreme Court Justices — completing the partisan theft of two seats on the Supreme Court using completely contradictory rationales,” Schumer, now the majority leader, stated.
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— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) June 14, 2021
On Monday, McConnell slammed certain Democrats’ efforts to pack the Supreme Court, citing Clinton-appointed Justice Stephen Breyer’s recent remarks on the dangers of politicizing the court.
“You mentioned Justice Breyer. I do want to give him a shout-out,” McConnell stated on Hewitt’s show.
“[H]e joined what Justice Ginsburg said in 2019 that nine is the right number for the Supreme Court. And I admire him for that. I think even the liberal justices on the Supreme Court have made it clear that court packing is a terrible idea,” McConnell added.
McConnell also highlighted a bipartisan group of senators’ infrastructure initiative, saying it had a “maybe 50-50” chance of succeeding.
McConnell also outlined Republicans’ “red lines,” including removing the 2017 tax cuts.
