Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has done more than most people in politics to protect our institutions. Attorney General Merrick Garland has managed to reinforce McConnell’s well-earned reputation.
Garland was once a judge nominated to the Supreme Court in 2016 by then-President Barack Obama. He was a “respected moderate jurist,” according to the Associated Press, one who the Washington Post said might “ultimately embarrass Senate Republicans into dropping their fierce opposition to the nomination.” CNN called it an “epic power play” by Obama, who was daring McConnell and Senate Republicans to oppose this ostensible centrist.
That facade is completely gone now. Garland is overseeing a partisan lawsuit against the state of Georgia. Garland baselessly asserted that Georgia’s new voting law was “enacted with the purpose of denying or abridging the right of black Georgians to vote on account of their race or color.”
Garland is mobilizing his Justice Department based on activist lies. We already know that Georgia’s voting law makes voting easier and more secure. Even the experts asked by the Washington Post determined that the “net effect” of the law was to expand the opportunities to vote for most Georgians, not limit them.” We know that Georgia makes it easier to vote than New York, with more days of early voting, only slightly fewer voting hours in a day, and the requirement of voter ID.
But Garland is not targeting New York. He’s targeting Georgia, conveniently just days after a Democratic bill that would lead to a federal takeover of elections was defeated in the Senate. Garland is overseeing a grotesque distortion of the role of the DOJ, taking up a partisan battle with a baseless lawsuit.
It’s another vindication of McConnell leading Senate Republicans to oppose Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court in 2016. McConnell was already justified based on 128 years of precedent, regardless of who Obama nominated. The thought that Garland was “moderate” enough to override that was irrelevant, but we now know it was also wrong.
Instead, the (mostly) superb Justice Neil Gorsuch now sits on the Supreme Court. McConnell and Senate Republicans prevented an overtly partisan actor in Garland from being able to legislate from the highest court in the land, which he is now trying to do from the DOJ. It’s another point in McConnell’s favor and a reminder that Republicans can never take anything for granted.
