Senate Leader Mitch McConnell has damaged the country for decades to come. At a point when Democrats paid little attention to the judicial nominations, he fed a slew of ultra-conservative judges into the judicial system. What will come out on the other side is ugly.
Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) will be facing the fight of her political life for re-election in November. For quite some time, people in Maine just kept re-electing her. After McConnell stole President Barack Obama’s last Supreme Court (SCOTUS) appointment, Americans started noticing what he was up to. They also caught on to Collins’ act.
She promised people that she would vote with the Democrats and dragged out the drama until the last moment. Then, she inevitably voted with the Republicans. Her bait-and-switch vote for SCOTUS Justice Brett Kavanaugh blew apart her ruse. That was when the people of Maine decided “enough.”
McConnell pulled one of his proteges and wholly unqualified protege’s out of his hat. Cory Wilson was confirmed to a seat on the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington on Thursday. This court has long been considered the second-highest in the country.
Democrats were against his appointment. That was due to how he has shown strict bipartisanship in his voting records on health care and LGBTQ rights. Collins joined the Democrats as the Senate voted 42 to 51 for his confirmation, according to The Bloomberg News.
With the November 2020 election looming merely months away, Collins was a little slow to the actual moderate ball. Her record has shown her voting in a straight line along with the very conservative Republicans. Perhaps, she believed that the people in her state were stupid or would not pay attention to her voting record. Either would be a poor mistake on her part.
McConnell has sought out youth over qualifications in his judicial selections. Walker, 38, had been rated “not qualified” for this seat by the American Bar Association. It noted that he was too inexperienced to hold this important seat. At the same time, the American Bar Association (ABA) awarded him the “highest rating possible” for the Washington, D.C. Circuit seat.
Collins said:
‘I oppose Judge Cory Wilson’s nomination to the Fifth Circuit. While Judge Wilson is entitled to his personal views, his comments about the legality of the Affordable Care Act, including calling the law ‘perverse’ and ‘illegitimate,’ raise doubts about his ability to rule impartially on matters where he holds very strong personal views.’
While Collins has billed herself as a moderate GOP senator, she will be up against some tough opponents in November. She was the only Republican to bite the bullet and vote against Wilson.
This week, the Senate will voted for his nomination to the D.C. Circuit. It was McConnell’s 200th judicial nominee confirmation.
Collins’s vote was among several votes against the president’s judicial nominees. She also opposed Justin Wilson’s nomination to the D.C. Circuit. She voted with the Democrats.
Wilson’s confirmation only required a simple majority. Given that the Republicans have had 53 seats in the Senate, he will likely be easily confirmed.
Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) were on a panel to determine the fate of McConnell’s nomination. They wrote, according to the Senate Judiciary site:
‘Judge Wilson has been an ardent supporter of restrictive voting measures, including voter ID laws, that disproportionately harm minority voters, and he has shown a pattern of dismissing legitimate concerns from voting rights groups.’
‘Appointing someone to the Fifth Circuit who refers to the concerns of African American citizens and community advocates regarding the effects of voter ID laws as ‘poppycock’ is a slap in the face to Black Americans at a time when our country is working to take steps forward on racial justice, not backwards (sic).’
Walker clerked for the SCOTUS Justice Brett Kavanaugh during the justice’s seat on the D.C. Circuit. He also clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy, whom the Trump’s convinced to retire. McConnell and Kavanaugh appeared for Walker’s investiture ceremony last March.
One of the problems with this man was his comments about Obamacare during his investiture and in an article that he wrote. Democrats decried his bipartisan choice and tied it to comments about the COVID-19 pandemic. Democrats argued that this might not be the time to confirm a judge who probably would vote against Obama’s Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) during the coronavirus pandemic.
His 2018 article reinforcing Kavanaugh’s nomination to the SCOTUS, he wrote that SCOTUS’ support of Obamacare was “indefensible.” Walker showed his poor taste by joking at his investiture about Chief Justice John Robert’s decision penalizing people for not getting insurance:
‘Over 12 years and 300 opinions, he has repeatedly fought for principles of textualism and originalism, reined in regulatory overreach, and ensured that administrative bureaucrats are accountable to the elected president. Nominating Kavanaugh would continue President Trump’s exemplary record of selecting the best-qualified person for the Supreme Court, as he did with his brilliant choice of Justice Neil Gorsuch.’
When Walker was confirmed, he was defensive about his article. He claimed he was just making a joke, which had a familiar ring to it. Donald Trump has often used that tactic:
‘[It wasn’t a] commentary on the merits of any particular healthcare policy. It was legal analysis on constitutionality.’
His approval marked McConnell’s 199th judicial confirmations for Trump.
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