Many Republican Senators are craven hypocrites, it seems. Despite the Senate GOP’s own decision to refuse to confirm then-President Barack Obama’s nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2016, citing the imminent presidential election as an excuse, most Senate Republicans now seem ready and eager to rush through a replacement for the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died last week. The next presidential election is much closer than it was when a vacancy opened up in 2016, but with one of their own in the White House, most Republican Senators suddenly don’t want to hear any more from the American people (via the upcoming election results) after all.
In a new video, the anti-Trump conservative group known as The Lincoln Project spotlights the hypocrisy of Republican Senators. Many of those who have come out recently in favor of rushing through a Ginsburg replacement were explicitly pushing the exact opposite idea in 2016 when Obama tried to nominate Merrick Garland to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia. These Senators, including Ted Cruz of Texas, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Mitch McConnnell or Kentucky, and others, vehemently insisted in 2016 that the American people should get to weigh in via the presidential election before confirming a new Supreme Court justice. Suddenly, their calculations have changed.
Check out the Lincoln Project video, which spotlights Republicans’ 2016 remarks, below:
GOP Senator, thy name is hypocrite. pic.twitter.com/cfJjefGWDi
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) September 21, 2020
McConnell claims that the original “principle” was that Supreme Court seats should not be filled during presidential election years if the White House and Senate are controlled by different political parties. Thus, he takes the current circumstances — with Trump, a Republican, in the White House — as a green light to move full speed ahead. McConnell and his team are essentially making all of this up — to suggest that there’s nothing on the books in federal legislation supporting his “principle” would be an understatement.
Trump says that he will nominate his choice to replace Ginsburg by the end of the week. It’s unclear if the Senate would even get to the point of a full Senate vote on the nominee before the election. If the Senate didn’t get to the nominee until post-election, then it would be particularly galling if they still moved forward even if Trump lost.
Check out Twitter’s response to the Lincoln Project video below:
