McConnell Angers Democrats With Vow to Fill a 2020 SCOTUS Vacancy
McConnell was accused of hypocrisy after saying the Senate would confirm a Supreme Court nominee from President Trump next year.
(Bloomberg) -- Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell drew accusations of hypocrisy from Democrats after saying the Senate would confirm a Supreme Court nominee from President Donald Trump next year, despite refusing to hold election-year hearings on President Barack Obama’s court pick in 2016.
Speaking in his home state of Kentucky on Tuesday, McConnell was asked what he would do about a high court vacancy if a seat were to open up next year.
"Oh, we’d fill it," McConnell said with a smile, according to a video of the event in Paducah.
Democrats criticized the remark because McConnell refused to allow a Senate vote on Obama’s Supreme Court pick, Judge Merrick Garland, who was nominated to replace Antonin Scalia after the justice died in February 2016.
Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders of Vermont wrote on Twitter, "What a hypocrite. Make no mistake about it, McConnell's goal has always been the same: lifetime appointments for extreme rightwing judges by any means."
McConnell spokesman David Popp said the majority leader’s position is not a reversal from 2016, arguing that the Senate at the time was controlled by a different party than the president, while in 2020 they’ll both be controlled by Republicans.
Same Party
"If there is a vacancy next year, because the White House and the Senate are the same party, we would vote to fill the slot," Popp said.
While McConnell cited that difference in 2016, he stressed that a Supreme Court vacancy shouldn’t be filled in a presidential election year.
"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," McConnell said on Feb. 13, 2016, the day Scalia died.
So far, there’s no indication of any upcoming vacancy. The Supreme Court’s oldest members are Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 86, and Justice Stephen Breyer, 80, both Democratic appointees. Republican-appointed Justice Clarence Thomas, 70, last month publicly rejected speculation that he might be planning to retire.
In March 2016, McConnell defended his refusal to consider Garland by saying that the Senate hadn’t filled a vacancy that occurred in a presidential election year in 80 years, and that the last time a Senate controlled by the opposition party did so during an election year was 1888.
"We think the important principle in the middle of this presidential election, which is raging, is that the American people need to weigh in and decide who’s going to make this decision," McConnell said on Fox News at the time.
Critics said those precedents were based on the fact that high court vacancies during a presidential election year are rare, and that his refusal to allow a vote on a nominee was unprecedented. McConnell was under pressure from conservatives to protect the Republican-appointed 5-4 majority on the Supreme Court.
Justice Kennedy
In the presidential election year of 1988, a Democratic-led Senate confirmed Republican President Ronald Reagan’s nominee, Anthony Kennedy, to the court. The seat had become vacant the previous year.
After Trump was elected, McConnell steered conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch through the confirmation process. He also increasingly focused on the distinction about which party controlled the Senate.
"There’s no chance that an opposition party in control of the Senate is going to fill a Supreme Court vacancy occurring in the middle of a presidential election year, and that’s why it hasn’t happened since the 1880s," McConnell said in October 2018.
McConnell’s top priority during the Trump administration has been confirming young conservative judges vetted by the Federalist Society, a conservative group that seeks to limit the federal government’s ability to assert powers that aren’t explicitly enumerated in the Constitution.
The GOP-controlled Senate has confirmed 112 Trump-picked judges so far — 69 on district courts, 41 on appeals courts and two on the Supreme Court — to lifetime-tenured positions.
"That’s the most important thing we’ve done for the country, which cannot be undone," McConnell said Tuesday in Kentucky.
--With assistance from Greg Stohr.
To contact the reporter on this story: Sahil Kapur in Washington at skapur39@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Laurie Asséo, Anna Edgerton
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