The gravedigger of democracy trolls the Democrats
by digby
This is nothing more than rank trolling and the Democrats should tell Mitch to go fuck himself. If they haven’t learned by now that this malevolent monster has no intention of ever honoring any concept but self-interest they will never learn it.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell bluntly warned Democrats on Thursday against weakening the legislative filibuster, an idea that has gained momentum with some presidential candidates and not ruled out by Senate Democratic leaders who backed a similar move six years ago to make it easier to break filibusters of most presidential nominees.
“The legislative filibuster is directly downstream from our founding tradition. If that tradition frustrates the whims of those on the far left, it is their half-baked proposals and not the centuries-old wisdom that need retooling,” McConnell wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times.
The Kentucky Republican argued that “strong minority rights have always been the Senate’s distinguishing feature” and reminded Democrats that when they used the “nuclear option” in 2013 to lower the supermajority threshold to break a filibuster for nominees, he had cautioned they would soon wish they hadn’t.
“You’ll regret this, and you may regret this a lot sooner than you think,” McConnell wrote at the top of his commentary, quoting his own admonishment to Democrats as then-Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat from Nevada, forced through that rules change.
Soon after, Republicans took control of the Senate and President Donald Trump won the White House. McConnell then made full use of the rules change he had decried to confirm scores of district and appeals court judges. He also employed the nuclear option again, this time to lower the filibuster threshold for Supreme Court nominees, allowing him to install Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the high court, confirmations that would have been unlikely under the old rules.Confirming so many judges has been a hallmark for Trump and McConnell, who both tout it as one of their most significant achievements as they each seek reelection.
“So, this is the legacy of the procedural avalanche Democrats set off,” wrote McConnell, predicting the “consequences of taking Sen. Reid’s advice will haunt liberals for decades.”
Golly, what’s he going to do?” Hold up a Supreme Court nomination until he gets a Republican president to appoint a wingnut of his choice? Now that would be a bad precedent….
Those of you who have been following this blog lo these many years know that I’ve been writing about the right’s total abandonment of any pretense of intellectual consistency and recognition of hypocrisy for a very long time. It gives them tremendous power. Now they have added total shamelessness and “I know you are but what am I ” to their repertoire and it’s made it impossible to deal with them on a rational basis.
It has been going that way for quite some time now. (Remember Dick Cheney?) But McConnell, like Trump, isn’t even trying to make serious arguments anymore. He’s just trolling and strong-arming and nothing more. Democrats must accept this reality and strategize accordingly.
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