Elections have consequences.
The consequences of the 2016 election have demonstrated once again the importance of that old adage following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and President Trump’s nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to our nation’s highest court.
With the passing of Justice Antonin Scalia in early 2016, the Supreme Court was front and center as an issue for both the presidential and Senate elections of that year. A decisive factor in the election of Donald J. Trump and Republicans maintaining control in the Senate was their shared promise to appoint and confirm strong judges to the U.S. Supreme Court who would respect the Constitution.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to allow a confirmation hearing for Barack Obama’s late-presidency nominee, Merrick Garland. McConnell made it clear that, because Republicans held the majority, they had no obligation to move the nomination until after the election. This followed a long democratic tradition: The last time a Supreme Court justice was confirmed by a majority-opposition Senate in an election year was 1888. Senate Republicans faced a time of testing and proved themselves worthy of the majority.
Because the 2014 and 2016 elections put and kept Republicans in the majority in the Senate, Obama was denied his chance to add another left-wing justice to the high court.
By blocking Obama’s nomination and keeping the opening on the Supreme Court until after the election, McConnell made the nominations of Supreme Court justices an immediate issue. Then-candidate Trump accordingly released a list of potential nominees that he promised to choose from if he was elected.
As president, Trump has kept his promise, and McConnell has done a masterful job of getting not only his Supreme Court nominees confirmed, but also record numbers of nominees for the lower courts.
For years, the American people have seen the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts legislate from the bench, making law instead of interpreting and faithfully applying the laws passed by Congress. Many of the Supreme Court’s recent rulings have crossed unacceptable lines. These decisions, and the probability of worse decisions to come, are a motivating factor for millions of voters who want to be governed by the people they elect to legislate, not by unelected elitist judges with lifetime appointments. That is why Trump is our 45th president, and why the Republicans are still in the majority in the Senate.
With his last two nominations to the Supreme Court and his nominations to fill vacancies on the lower courts, Trump proved to his base he could be trusted on judicial nominations. By not wilting under vicious attacks from the Left and their allies in the left-wing media, McConnell and Senate Republicans have repeatedly justified their majority.
The 2020 elections for president and Senate are perhaps the most consequential in U.S. history. The American people who voted to elect Trump in 2016 and who voted to keep the Republicans in the majority in the Senate expect them to add another justice to the court who will be faithful to the Constitution: Amy Coney Barrett.
Elections have consequences. That is essentially what Obama said to Republicans in 2009, during a meeting on his economic policies. He was right, especially when it comes to the nomination and confirmation of judges and justices. If Republicans want Americans to keep them in the majority in the Senate, they need to once again prove that they are worthy of it by confirming Barrett to replace Ginsburg.
Gary Palmer represents Alabama’s 6th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.
