Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has no problem with President Joe Biden pledging to nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court, breaking with many Senate Republicans who criticized the move.
”I heard a couple of people say they thought it was inappropriate for the president to announce he was going to put an African American woman on the court. Honestly, I did not think that was inappropriate,” McConnell said at a luncheon with business leaders in Lexington, Kentucky, on Tuesday.
Biden promised during a presidential primary debate in 2020 to nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court. He is expected to announce that woman, who will replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, by the end of this month.
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“President Reagan promised to put a woman on the Supreme Court: Sandra Day O’Connor. President Trump promised to put a woman on the Supreme Court when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away. So, I’m not complaining about that,” McConnell said.
If Biden “picks a highly qualified nominee,” the Kentucky senator added, “she will be respectfully vetted with a kind of process I think you can be proud of — which certainly did not happen when Brett Kavanaugh was nominated.”
McConnell’s stance is a break from a number of other members of the Senate Republican Conference who critiqued Biden’s pledge to nominate a black woman.
“The irony is that the Supreme Court is at the very time hearing cases about this sort of affirmative racial discrimination while adding someone who is the beneficiary of this sort of quota,” Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker said on a radio show in January.
Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz on his podcast called it “offensive.”
“Black women are, what, 6% of the U.S. population? He’s saying to 94% of Americans, ‘I don’t give a damn about you. You are ineligible,'” Cruz said.
“I wish he wouldn’t disqualify everybody in America who doesn’t meet that criteria. I think you should pick the most qualified person,” Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey told reporters on Jan. 31.
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But there are some Republicans who did not object to the pledge.
“I would welcome the appointment of a black female to the court. I believe that diversity benefits the Supreme Court,” Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins said on ABC in January. “But the way that the president has handled this nomination has been clumsy at best. It adds to the further perception that the court is a political institution like Congress when it is not supposed to be.”
