If the GOP Senate majority confirms a replacement for deceased Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, it will be stealing a seat on the high court, says Sen. Chuck Schumer, the leftist from New York.
Even worse, the party will have become a repeat offender. It stands convicted, after all, of stealing a seat four years ago when it blocked the confirmation of Merrick Garland, appointed by President Obama, which paved the way for President Trump’s elevation of Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch.
Thus will the leader of the Republican robbers, Senator Mitch McConnell, be charged with destroying the Senate, as Schumer put it.
All because the GOP majority will have done its job, again, and confirmed a justice.
“Destroy the Institution”
Speaking to reporters, Schumer accused McConnell and the GOP majority of political grand larceny in the first degree.
“So, so many have paid tribute to come to the steps of the highest court to pay tribute to Justice Ginsburg, but my Senate colleagues have paid tribute as well, but in words only,” Schumer said.
Then came the indictment of the senator from Kentucky, who promised that Trump’s pick to replace the 87-year-old supporter of partial-birth abortion will be confirmed:
Republican majority leader McConnell likes to say he’s a Senate institutionalist. Nothing could be further from the truth. He has defiled the Senate…. Leader McConnell’s actions may now very well destroy the institution of the Senate. If leader McConnell presses forward, the Republican majority will have stolen two Supreme Court seats four years apart, using completely contradictory rationales. This was McConnell’s rule when Merrick Garland was nominated by president Obama. “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.” Certainly [that] isn’t applying now. Leader McConnell has basically decided the rules don’t apply to Republicans, even their own rules. It’s just brute political force.
Schumer tied the nomination to ObamaCare and every other leftist cause.
“Everything Americans value hangs in the balance,” the Democrat said. “Healthcare, protections for preexisting conditions, women’s rights, gay rights, workers’ rights, labor rights, voting rights, civil rights, climate change and so much else is at risk.”
Whether Americans “value” all those things is open to question, but then came the allusion to ObamaCare:
The entire Affordable Care Act and protections for up to 130 million Americans with preexisting conditions hangs in the balance. A woman’s fundamental, constitutional right to make her own medical decisions, the right to choose for the first time in decades hangs in the balance. The right of workers to organize and collectively bargain for fair wages hangs in the balance. The future of our planet, environmental protections and the possibility of bold legislation to address climate change as well as the Clean Air and Clean Water Act hang in the balance. Voting rights and the right of every American citizen to have a voice in our democracy hangs in the balance, and so much more. And on every one of these issues, what the Republicans have done is they have pulled the federal judiciary to their far right side. Now, they want to tilt the Supreme Court even further away so it doesn’t reflect the values of the majority of Americans, it reflects the values of an extreme right-wing majority.
Ginsburg’s Wish
Schumer and his leftist cohort on Capitol Hill are apparently convinced that honoring Ginsburg’s “legacy” means honoring her “most fervent wish” that she “will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”
Problem is, the Constitution does not require the president to honor a dying or former justice’s “most fervent wish,” and neither does it permit a justice a role in picking her replacement.
Still, Pelosi implicitly threatened impeachment if Trump nominates a replacement, and House House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, another New York Democrat, disinterred FDR’s failed court-packing plan as a means to blunt the possible long-term effects of another Republican appointee.
If McConnell and the Senate GOP move to “force through a nominee,” he tweeted, “then the incoming Senate should immediately move to expand the Supreme Court.”
Photo: AP Images
R. Cort Kirkwood is a long-time contributor to The New American and a former newspaper editor.
