With word that Sen. Claire McCaskill is also a "no" on Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, Republicans appear unlikely to get the 60 votes they need to defeat a Democratic filibuster. In response, Mitch McConnell has gleefully embraced the "nuclear option" to blow up the filibuster. But Sen. John McCain is working to broker a rather suspect deal that would preserve the minority party's ability to block Supreme Court nominees—just not this time around. Bloomberg writes:
McCain said a deal would require eight Democrats to vote to advance Gorsuch’s nomination in return for a promise that in the future they would be able to block a nominee in extraordinary circumstances. He added it would look “kind of like the Gang of 14,” a deal struck more than a decade ago that averted the majority party’s use of the “nuclear option” to eliminate the 60-vote threshold for advancing lower-court nominees.
Okay, so McCain wants to make sure the minority party has the filibuster option ... in the future. “You can have it, just not this time.” Seriously, what kind of crap is that? That fits in nicely with the crowd that's arguing Democrats should preserve the option to filibuster the next nominee—as if the outcome would be any different during the next Supreme Court battle.
No thanks, McCain et al. The Russian cloud that's hanging over the Trump administration means there's no time like the present to go down swinging on the nominee of a pr*sident who's currently under FBI investigation.
Besides that, McConnell should be forced to finally put his cards on the table. After all, it was behind closed doors in 2009 that McConnell pledged to hobble Barack Obama’s presidency at every turn; it was behind closed doors in 2016 that he kept Obama from issuing a bipartisan warning about Russian interference in the election. And now he's blocking an independent investigation of that interference. Democrats can't allow McConnell to get away with winning this Supreme Court battle on a threat alone.
If McConnell's going to break the Senate, he should not only have to own it, he should have to own it before the 2018 midterms.
from Daily Kos http://ift.tt/2oqMkj3
0 التعليقات:
Post a Comment