An hour after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was ready to begin the process of confirming a nominee to fill the Supreme Court’s vacancy. Democrats and some in the media were surprised. I wasn’t.
When I interviewed McConnell a year earlier, he told me how the Senate would handle a vacancy in 2020, a presidential election year, even one late in the year. There would be no hesitating. “We intended to take full advantage of the opportunity to continue to transform the courts for as long as we have the ability to do so,” he said. And that ability wouldn’t end until President Trump was no longer in the White House or Republicans had lost their narrow control of the Senate.
“It would be hard to process even a noncontroversial Supreme Court nominee in under two months,” McConnell conceded. “But certainly, we would try if that happened.” That’s bold talk, and, as best I could tell, he meant every word of it.
What McConnell talked about a year ago is pretty close to the situation now since Ginsburg’s death. And it should be obvious to anyone with a bit of political sense that McConnell was ready to step on the accelerator and Democrats were glued to the floor.
A good method for judging a politician or political writer is whether they add to the strength of your side. Think what Charles Krauthammer did for the power and credibility of conservative foreign policy. Think what McConnell has done to transform the federal judiciary into a conservative stronghold in a nonconservative era in America.
McConnell’s commitment to confirming a third Supreme Court justice nominated by Trump is one example. He infuriated Democrats, always a good sign. They threatened to pack the court or impeach Trump again. A bargain with Democrats proposed by anti-Trump Republicans went nowhere.
Liberals tried to persuade a handful of Republican senators to vote with Democrats to block a nomination. But their targets — Lindsey Graham, Lamar Alexander, Joni Ernst, Chuck Grassley, Mitt Romney — didn’t blink. They stuck with McConnell.
McConnell has been accused of hypocrisy for insisting voters should have a say on who filled a court vacancy in 2016, then recognized things had changed in 2020 and let Trump select his nominee. McConnell said the switch was based on history. Since 1888, nominees hadn’t been picked if the president and majority leader were from different parties, but did if they belonged to the same party. This practice was not binding, but McConnell prevailed anyway.
The press, which criticizes any Republican willing to work with Trump, can be relied on to attack McConnell. But this time, with Democrats looking so pathetic, there were exceptions. This was the take on McConnell by CNN’s Chris Cillizza:
“With the near-certain confirmation of fully one third of the court over the last four years, McConnell’s legacy is complete. He will go down as one of the most consequential Senate leaders in modern history, overseeing a massive ideological overhaul of the judiciary branch … And there’s not a damn thing Democrats can do about it.”
An unanswered question in Washington is how does McConnell do it? Why is he so successful in making Democrats, especially Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, seem so feeble? I suspect liberal journalists don’t search overtime for an answer because it might prove to be highly favorable to McConnell. A few, led by Jane Mayer of the New Yorker, have popularized the concept of McConnell as Trump’s chief enabler. That’s not meant as a compliment. The point is Trump has been a successful president in some ways, bad ways, and since he’s not competent or knowledgeable enough to achieve them on his own, somebody else must be responsible. Voila, it’s McConnell, plus a platoon of wise men and women who have passed through the Trump administration. No one stays for long.
More than a few conservatives agree McConnell has influenced Trump for the better. He’s played a major role in the president’s nearly complete embrace of the conservative agenda. At the least, Trump now appears to be comfortable with conservative ideas.
Is there anyone in America who expected Trump to be the first president to speak at the annual pro-life rally on Capitol Hill? That’s as culturally conservative an event as there is these days. His speech wasn’t as compelling on the subject as, say, one by Ronald Reagan. But for Trump, it was a big step in the right direction.
Fred Barnes is a Washington Examiner senior columnist.
