Mitch McConnell Is Hoping People Just Forget He’s to Blame for Abortion Rights Being Obliterated

Authored by vanityfair.com and submitted by alicen_chains

Like a group project with some of the worst people in the world, there are many people to blame for the likely overturning of Roe v. Wade. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, for one, who wrote the draft opinion claiming the landmark decision “was egregiously wrong from the start.” The other conservative justices who are expected to vote to strike it down. Donald Trump, who followed through on his pledge to exclusively appoint justices who would destroy a woman’s right to choose. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, who for some reason believed those justices when they suggested they wouldn’t do that. Antiabortion activists. The antiabortion lobby. We could go on. But while scores of people have played a role, one could argue that, in this group project from hell, there is no who deserves more blame here than Mitch McConnell.

As Politico noted on Tuesday, “there’s a direct line from the Senate minority leader’s decision to hold a high court vacancy open in 2016 to the potential demise of Roe six years later.” If you can’t remember that far back, or had to bury it in the deepest recesses of your mind as a coping mechanism, a quick refresher: After conservative Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016, Barack Obama had the opportunity, seeing as he was president, to nominate a justice to fill his seat. Yet before the 44th POTUS even mentioned the name Merrick Garland, McConnell was already vowing to block any and all nominees. “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice,” McConnell insisted. “Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.” That argument was obviously absurd given that the American people already had had a voice in the selection of the next Supreme Court justice, and they had it when they voted for Obama, who still had almost an entire year left on his second term. But in the grand tradition of Republicans just making shit up to suit their needs, McConnell held fast to what he would later claim was a historical precedent going back hundreds of years—wherein “no Senate ha[d] confirmed an opposite-party president’s Supreme Court nominee in a presidential election year”—and refused to even hold a confirmation hearing for the guy who would ultimately become Obama‘s pick to succeed Scalia. Which, of course, allowed Republicans to effectively steal a Supreme Court seat that should have gone to a liberal. Then, roughly four years later, like the shameless hack he is, McConnell would have Amy Coney Barrett confirmed and sworn in with less than two months before the 2020 election, despite his previous “election year” rule.

Of course, that’s just a fraction of the work the Kentucky lawmaker put into sending the U.S. on the path to a post-Roe world.

CaptainNoBoat on May 4th, 2022 at 21:11 UTC »

The events surrounding SCOTUS nominations in the last 6 years pretty much define the modern Republican Party:

McConnell, Feb 13 2016:

"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."

Lindsey Graham:

"I want you to use my words against me. If there's a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say, 'Lindsey Graham said let's let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination."

RBG's dying wish:

"My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed"

-On September 18, 2020.. HOURS after RBG dies, McConnell announces they will be replacing her within 1 and 1/2 months.

"President Trump's nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate"

-After they do so in record time, they hold a maskless, packed nomination party for Barrett which would end up infecting virtually half the White House with COVID.

The hypocrisy and immorality is just grotesquely sickening. These people are incredibly dangerous and should be nowhere near positions of power. Yet here we are.

Tone_Deaf55 on May 4th, 2022 at 20:07 UTC »

He was here before trump and he's here after trump. History will show he almost single handedly destroyed freedom and democracy in this country.

CarmineFields on May 4th, 2022 at 20:01 UTC »

‘I don’t see a problem, the mother lays a clutch of eggs on the beach and gets back in the ocean and swims away’ - Mitch McConnell