With the election getting closer and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s ongoing health issues back in the news, the ghoulish discussion of Supreme Court vacancies has heated up once again. That means that once again, people are misrepresenting the standard to which Merrick Garland was held in 2016. This time, the one pushing the falsehood is Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski.
“If we now say that months prior to the election is OK when nine months was not, that is a double standard, and I don’t believe we should do it,” Murkowski said, referencing Garland, “so, I would not support it.”
Here’s what Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said 10 days after the death of Antonin Scalia: “You’d have to go back to 1888, when Grover Cleveland was in the White House, to find the last time a Senate of a different party from the president confirmed a nominee for the Supreme Court in an election year.”
McConnell has said that Republicans would fill a vacancy if it were to arise this year, which is not a departure from his 2016 standard. Again, a key part of McConnell’s point was that if a partisan divide existed between the White House and Senate in an election year, then a high court nomination should await the election result. Without the predicate of a partisan divide, the nomination need not be blocked.
Yet Chris Cillizza at CNN charged hypocrisy last month, writing, “So, what’s different? Well, a Republican is president now.” It apparently did not occur to Cillizza that he was disproving his very argument in that sentence. With Republicans in charge of both the White House and Senate, no partisan divide exists.
It’s clear why Democrats and the media feel the need to confuse this point. They don’t want another justice on the Supreme Court who would properly interpret the Constitution, especially if they were replacing one of the court’s liberal justices. But what is in it for Murkowski?
When it became clear that Senate Republicans were resolute in blocking Garland’s nomination, Murkowski backed off her original position calling for hearings. She voted in favor of Neil Gorsuch, a noncontroversial nomination given that he was already replacing another constitutionalist like Scalia. She then backed down from supporting Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination in 2018, falling in line behind the evidence-less assault on his character.
It’s clear that Murkowski, a centrist who openly backs Roe v. Wade, doesn’t want to be put on the spot over a nominee who could, in theory, be the deciding vote in overturning it. Murkowski hasn’t shown much bravery in previous Supreme Court battles, and it’s clear she wants to avoid the fight on this one before it even begins.
Murkowski’s fabrication of the GOP standard she didn’t initially hold lends credence to the Democratic straw man the media will screech about if a vacancy actually opens. It’s frustrating that Murkowski has found another way to play into the hands of the Democratic Party as it gears up to pack the Supreme Court if it retakes power.
