Senator Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) didn’t even wait 24 hours after the death of Ruther Bader Ginsburg to start rubbing her hands at the thought of ramming through a far-right replacement on the Supreme Court.
Loeffler, whose appointment to her Senate seat took effect in January, 2020, wasn’t around when Mitch McConnell and a long list of Senate Republicans refused to give President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee a hearing because it was 10 months before the 2016 presidential election, but she was certainly gung ho about ramming through a Trump nominee a little more than a month before the 2020 election.
Loeffler said at the beginning her “thoughts and prayers” were with Justice Ginsburg’s family but Loeffler’s focus was clearly on advancing her conservative politics. Even as she pretended to only be thinking of the Constitution.
LOEFFLER: Look, my thoughts and prayers are with the family of Justice Ginsburg, but look, the Constitution allows this process to keep moving forward, and the president has every right to nominate someone, and leader McConnell has said that we will have a vote on the Senate floor on this, and I completely support that.
We need to bring forward a conservative justice, someone who will be a strict constructionist, who will protect innocent life, who will bring those Second Amendment cases and make sure that we’re protecting our right to bear arms in this country, and we need to keep that process moving regardless of being an election year.
[…]
This is the importance of our Constitution, of following the law, of not being intimidated by the threats on the left that want to radically change our country, that are already threatening violence you can see on social media.”
As she spoke, an apparently rogue Fox producer posted a graphic showing voters trust Biden more than Trump on SCOTUS nominations, 52-45%.
Loeffler finished by whining and hate mongering that Democrats, “want to tear our country apart, [they] don’t respect our Constitution, our rights, they don’t believe in our way of life today.”
Or maybe Loeffler just feels grateful to her colleagues who let her off the hook over her very, very suspicious and fortunate stock trades, made right after a private briefing on the coronavirus.
You can watch Loeffler below, from the September 19, 2020 Cavuto Live. You can support Raphael Warnock, Loeffler's Democratic challenger with the best chance of winning against her in November, here.
It would not hurt, however, for each and every disgusted voter – Dem, GOP or independent – to write a furious note to each and every candidate. Should the GOP persist in not wanting to let voters speak, voters must take to alternative channels and those letters to representatives can have quite a punch.
The part of my gut instinct that remains (infuriatingly) optimistic in the face of bleakness) is telling me that Gorsuch might actually be capable of basing his acts on principles and reason. Kavenaugh is a lost cause. We’d have been better off had Barrett been selected in 2017.
The Dems do not have a single way to block this from happening. If they attempt to delay, McConnell or Graham will maneuver around them. If they attempt to boycott the hearing, McConnell and Graham will conduct them without the Dems. Simply put, the Dems have no say in what happens here and McConnell doesn’t need a single vote from them. That said, Joe Manchin voted for Barrett when she was appointed to her current inappropriate position. He may well do so again.
The only possible hope here is for 4 Republican Senators to show some backbone and hold to the same principle they voiced in 2016, so that the process could be held back until after November 3rd, so that we’ll know if the American people really support this approach.
And even in that scenario, we’ll still have another 6 weeks of potential for Barrett to be rammed through, even in the event of a crushing Pence loss and a switch in the Senate Majority for 2021. I note that even if Mark Kelly wins in Arizona (as appears likely), the notion that he gets seated early is based on everyone forgetting that the GOP governor, AG and county recorders will not simply gum up the works so that he doesn’t get seated until 2021.
I don’t like saying this, but barring a sudden and unexpected explosion of integrity from multiple Republican Senators, we’re very likely looking at Barrett successfully being rammed onto the high court within the next 4 weeks.
