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… And welcome to the coverage of another day of politics in the United States, dominated by the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the looming fight over who will replace her in the Supreme Court.
The liberal heroine died on Friday of complications from pancreatic cancer and at the age of 87. The tributes poured in.
And then the plot began.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said it would put a nominee to the vote, even though there were less than 50 days left until the presidential election, and infamously in 2016 denied Obama nominee Merrick Garland a hearing for eight months, saying such a nomination should not be made for a year. electoral.
Donald Trump said he would act quickly to nominate a replacement for Ginsburg, and later confirmed that it would be a female. Most observers hope she’s Amy Coney Barrett, a strict Catholic viewed with apprehension by pro-abortion activists.
Lindsey Graham, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee who will lead the nomination, was recorded in the Garland fight saying that justice should not be confirmed so close to the election. Never mind, at the end of the day, citing Democratic movements in the bitter partisan war of the last decade as motivation, he said he was ready. He would seek to promote the Trump candidate.
And so to the trenches, where not everything is so simple. Republicans have a 53-47 majority in the Senate. That means that in a process that could even extend into the lame duck period after the Nov. 3 election, even if Trump loses to Joe Biden, they can lose three votes and still approve a nominee with Vice President Mike Pence as a runoff. Two moderate Republicans, Suse Collins from Maine and Lisa Murkowski from Alaska, are on record saying that they believe the winner of the presidential election should choose the new judge. And in Arizona, a special election to replace John McCain could see a new Democrat, Mark Kelly, in early November.
All eyes are on Utah’s Mitt Romney – not a candidate for election, a proven enemy of Trump – and others in fierce re-election battles, including Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Cory Gardner of Colorado. Would McConnell prefer to keep control of the Senate or tilt the court to the right for a generation? That is the question, or one of them.
To read more, here is our columnist Robert Reich on how for McConnell, one of the most ruthless, and his opponents say that the Washington operators of all time forever trump principle:
