In the previous post, I assured you that Republicans were already dancing on the grave of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
One of them is our appointed, not elected Senator Martha McSally. McSally calls on U.S. Senate to vote on a Trump Supreme Court nominee:
Arizona Republican Sen. Martha McSally said Friday the U.S. Senate should vote on President Donald Trump’s nominee to fill the vacancy left by the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, echoing sentiments by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that the nominee receive a Senate vote.
Some senators are being cautious in trying to avoid stepping into the intense partisan politics that await.
Not McSally, who is fighting to defend her seat — and with it, potentially the GOP majority in the November election.
“This U.S. Senate should vote on President Trump’s next nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court,” McSally wrote on Twitter, after offering prayers for her family and noting Ginsburg’s pioneering career.
This U.S. Senate should vote on President Trump's next nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court.
— Martha McSally (@MarthaMcSally) September 19, 2020
As the Arizona Republic’s E.J. Montini notes, Sen. Martha McSally managed only 15 minutes of respect for RBG:
Everything you need to know about Republican Sen. Martha McSally can be discerned in two tweets, fifteen miinutes apart, she sent on Sept. 18.
The country had just learned that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. She was 87. Ginsburg was the second woman to serve on the court. She was a fierce, brilliant advocate for women’s rights. A legal pioneer. Fearless.
Women from Ginsburg’s generation set the stage for the success and advancement of women like McSally and so many other smart, ambitious women who, in Ginsburg’s day, were often forced into subservient roles.
McSally was appointed senator after Sen. John McCain’s death and after having lost an election to Sen. Kyrsten Sinema.
Instead of asserting her independence, however, McSally has been a sheep in the flock answering to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and President Donald Trump.
* * *
McConnell, displaying no respect for the dead, or for honesty, almost immediately announced that the senate will vote on a nominee presented by Trump prior to the election.
Is it too much to expect even a bit of honor from a politician?
Don’t answer that.
So, here comes McSally.
She’s down in the polls to Democrat Mark Kelly and needing all the support she can get from McConnell and Trump.
On the day of RBG’s death, at 5:49 p.m., McSally published a tweet saying:
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg broke barriers for all women. My prayers are with her family in this difficult time.
Turns out that McSally’s “prayers” for RBG, such as they were, lasted all of fifteen minutes.
At 6:04 p.m. McSally tweeted:
This U.S. Senate should vote on President Trump’s next nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court.
One of the great women in American history had passed away and from McSally she gets fifteen minutes. Then it’s back to politics.
Back to self-preservation.
Back to groveling.
Everything RBG was not. God rest her soul.
Here’s the thing: because Martha McSally is appointed, not elected, her defeat on election day means that Mark Kelly can be sworn in as Arizona’s next senator as soon as November 30, not January 3. Defeating Martha McSally means one less sycophant cult member of the personality cult of Donald Trump in the Senate during the interregnum period, when McConnell’s evil plot to ram through a Supreme Court nominee during a lame-duck session is most likely to occur. (For McSally to vote on a nominee after having been rejected by Arizona voters twice in two years would be the ultimate display of GOP authoritarianism and arrogant disregard for the will of the voters).
The New York Times reports, The winner of the Arizona Senate race could be seated in time for a vote on a Supreme Court pick.
If Mark Kelly, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Arizona, unseats Senator Martha McSally, a Republican who was appointed to her seat and began serving last year, he could be sworn in as early as Nov. 30 — possibly in time to vote on a new Supreme Court nominee, elections experts said.
Hypothetically, that would narrow the Republicans’ 53-to-47 majority in the upper chamber, which may become relevant if a vote on a replacement for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was delayed until a lame-duck session after the election.
The Arizona race is technically a special election. The state’s Republican governor appointed Ms. McSally to the seat after she was defeated by Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat, in a closely contested Senate race in 2018.
Mr. Kelly, a former astronaut and the husband of former Representative Gabrielle Giffords, has maintained a steady lead over Ms. McSally, a former military pilot. If Mr. Kelly wins, state election law stipulates a final canvass of the balloting be completed by the end of November, barring legal challenges.
On Friday, Republican and Democratic election attorneys told The Arizona Republic that such a scenario was possible — a possibility embraced on social media by progressives grappling with the dark and unnerving prospect of a high-stakes court fight with an uncertain outcome.
“Everything in statute suggests it happens very quickly after the election results are finalized,” Mary O’Grady, a Democratic election lawyer, told the paper.
It is now an imperative to defeat Martha McSally by large enough numbers to certify her defeat by November 30.
It is my fondest hope that I never have to hear the name of Martha McSally ever again after this election. She should fade into irrelevance, to be forgotten by time.
UPDATE: CNN reports:
Here is a list of four Republicans senators who have said they will oppose a vote before the election:
Maine Sen. Susan Collins told the New York Times, “I think that’s too close, I really do.”
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski in September said, “Fair is fair,” and she would not vote to replace RBG before the election” [Alaska Public Radio reports].
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham in October 2018 said, “If an opening comes in the last year of President Trump’s term, and the primary process has started, we’ll wait to the next election. And I’ve got a pretty good chance of being the Judiciary [Chairman]. Hold the tape.”
UPDATE: Lindsey Graham (S.C.) tweeted on Saturday that he would support Trump “in any effort to move forward regarding the recent vacancy created by the passing of Justice Ginsburg.” No principles other than kissing Trump’s ass.
Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley said in July he would follow the Biden rule, “I’m just following what was established by the Biden Rule in 1986 and then emphasized by him in 1992… They set the pattern. I didn’t set the pattern. But it was very legitimate that you can’t have one rule for Democratic presidents and another rule for Republican presidents.”
Sen. Grassley, per usual, is full of shit. In Context: The ‘Biden Rule’ on Supreme Court nominations in an election year:
Biden’s floor speech was on June 25, 1992…
There was no Supreme Court vacancy to fill.
There was no nominee to consider.
The Senate never took a vote to adopt a rule to delay consideration of a nominee until after the election.
Nonetheless, Biden took to the floor in a speech addressing the Senate president to urge delay if a vacancy did appear. But he didn’t argue for a delay until the next president began his term, as McConnell is doing. He said the nomination process should be put off until after the election, which was on Nov. 3, 1992.
This is why it is correctly called the “McConnell Rule,” all Republican bullshit aside. The only time it has ever occurred is when Mitch McConnell blocked a voted on Judge Merrick Garland.
It is important to note that any nomination expires at the end of this congressional term on January 3.
Barack Obama, quoted by NBC News:
“Four and a half years ago, when Republicans refused to hold a hearing or an up-or-down vote on Merrick Garland, they invented the principle that the Senate shouldn’t fill an open seat on the Supreme Court before a new president was sworn in.”
“A basic principle of the law — and of everyday fairness — is that we apply rules with consistency, and not based on what’s convenient or advantageous in the moment.”
“The rule of law, the legitimacy of our courts, the fundamental workings of our democracy all depend on that basic principle. As votes are already being cast in this election, Republican Senators are now called to apply that standard.”
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About McSally…
She bet the farm on Trump and she has no recourse but to remain a sycophant, a Hitler’s inner circle wannabe. She doesn’t seem to be getting much in return from him, at least so far. Maybe if she were younger, taller, blonder, or had 800cc breast implants.
We are also going to remember Falcon9 and the mexican restaurant menu scandal, and the sad tears of a shamed man who knew what he was doing was wrong.
President Trump made a huge increase in 2019 real median household income. No other president has even come close to his results. Real Median Household Income is the ultimate measure of both policy effectiveness and equity. In 2019, President Trump set an all time record $68,703 with a $5,524 increase in real median household income. This increase is 60% higher than Obama’s largest increase and Obama’s increase wasn’t to a record, it was a recovery.
By comparison, both the Eurozone and the European Union are below $39,000 per household.
Governor Ducey did even better. Ducey increased Real Median Household Income by over $6,000 to over $70,000 per year. There is a chance he had the largest increase in the nation.
Now, Covid-19 caused the second Great Depression, a 15% drop in employment as compared to the first Great Depression’s 19% drop in employment.
It took Roosevelt four years to recover 50% of the jobs lost in the first Great Depression. It took President Trump just four months to recover half of the jobs lost in the second Great Depression.
President Trump twice forced Krugman and Larry Summers to throw away their mythological economics textbooks.
People remember results. People remember that Harding and Coolidge reduced tax rates to 24% and increased economic activity 47% in the roaring 20s. People remember that Kennedy reduced income tax rates substantially and economic growth hit over 6% for two consecutive years. People remember that Reagan reduced tax rates and his last five years saw GDP grow 31%. People remember that Obama increased taxes and his last five years grew 11%.
Now, people will forever remember Trump’s huge increase in Real Household Income and his incredible speedy recovery from the second Great Depression.
When we assess the next four years of stagnation under Biden, people will compare.
The pendulum will swing again.
Almost nothing Falcon9 says here is correct.
Employment and the stock market all went up higher under Obama, and they’re all down now because Trump pretended a deadly viral pandemic was something he could lie about, they way he lied about marble tiles floors when he was just a bankrupt condo salesman in New York City.
But nice try, propaganda-breath.
Hi John
I am sorry but people are going to remember 200,000 people needlessly dying. They are going to remember 24,000 lies. They are going to remember “playing it down.” They are going to remember trying to get rid of the Affordable Care Act during a pandemic. They are going to remember him breaking his promises on getting Mexico to pay for the wall, providing health care better and cheaper than Obamacare, and launching a massive infrastructure program. They are going to remember him getting endorsed by David Duke twice. They are going to remember that he said there were fine people on both sides during Charlottesville. They are going to remember him forcibly dispersing peaceful protestors for a photo op with an upside-down Bible. They are going to remember him getting impeached. They are going to remember him taking the economy he inherited from the Obama/Biden Administration (where jobs created per month) were higher and driving it into the ditch with his poor response to COVID 19. The people will remember on November 3 John.
And they are going to remember who backed up these atrocities all the way. There’s a huge bill for past and present Republican malfeasance coming due and hopefully they’ll pay the price for many election cycles to come. Plus the greediest payday loan levels of interest.
They are also going to remember the children in cages and the recent reports of unapproved hysterectomies performed on detained Latina women.
Just a reminder of how anti-democratic and anti-majoritarian these radical authoritarian Republicans are: “If Clinton Wins, Republicans Suggest Shrinking Size of Supreme Court”, https://www.npr.org/2016/11/03/500560120/senate-republicans-could-block-potential-clinton-supreme-court-nominees
For the first time, some Senate Republicans are saying that if Hillary Clinton is elected, the GOP should prevent anyone she nominates from being confirmed to fill the current court vacancy, or any future vacancy.
Now some Republicans are suggesting the wait for Scalia’s replacement could last much longer, perhaps an entire presidential term, or two. Three Republican senators have said directly that they would consider leaving Scalia’s seat empty as long as Clinton is in office.
Sen. John McCain was the first. Appearing on a conservative radio talk show, he said that if Clinton is elected, “I promise you that we will be united against any Supreme Court nominee [that] she would put up.” His press secretary quickly tried to backpedal, but McCain himself has not.
Since then, Sens. Ted Cruz and Richard Burr have upped the ante, while other Republican senators have dodged and weaved on the question. The Senate’s No. 2 Republican, Texas Sen. John Cornyn, said he didn’t want to “speculate” on the question.
But Burr, in a tough re-election battle in North Carolina, said in a tape-recorded meeting with Republican volunteers last weekend, “If Hillary becomes president, I am going to do everything I can do to make sure four years from now, we still got an opening on the Supreme Court.”
As for Cruz, he suggested there is nothing sacrosanct about having nine justices. For support, he pointed to a statement made by Justice Stephen Breyer during an interview in which Breyer noted that the court has historically functioned with as few as five or six justices.