Mitch McConnell Does His Best Chris Crocker Impression: ‘Leave The Supreme Court Alone!

In a weird convergence of events this week, Britney Spears Has Won Her Bid To End Her Conservatorship.

In 2007, Chris Crocker, then only 19 years old, sat down in front of a camera to film a video that would become a major part of pop culture history. Chris Crocker, ‘Leave Britney Alone’ Video Creator, Reflects On What’s Changed.

The “Grim Reaper of Democracy,” Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, did his best Chris Crocker impression in an op-ed in the Washington Post this week: Democrats, leave the Supreme Court alone!

Remember that Grim Reaper subverted the Constitution with a judicial blockade to deny President Obama appointing a justice to the Supreme Court – “One of my proudest moments was when I told Obama, ‘You will not fill this Supreme Court vacancy‘” – and four years later just weeks before election day rammed through Amy Coney Barrett, effectively stealing a second Supreme Court seat from the eventual election winner, Joe Biden. Grim Reaper views the Supreme Court as his personal creation. The man subverted the Constitution with his made-up “McConnell Rules.” Fuck him.

From Grim Reaper’s op-ed:

“We find ourselves in a moment of democratic reckoning.” That’s what Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a Latin American audience in October. His remarks specifically named “undermining the independence of the courts” and “packing courts” as warning signs that a nation’s institutions are in danger.

Coming from President Biden’s top diplomat, this suggested a surreal lack of self-awareness. Just a few days earlier, here at home, the Biden administration had taken another step to erode the independence of our own Supreme Court. It had published a first draft of radical findings from the pseudo-academic commission that the president created to flirt with the radical concept of court-packing.

Are you effin’ kidding me? Any “surreal lack of self-awareness” is from this man who stole two Supreme Court Seats in order to pack the court with radical right-wing ideologues. Secretary Blinken could just as well have been alluding to Mitch McConnell. And the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States is made up of actual academics and experts, not “pseudo-academics” as this anti-intellectual partisan hack disparages their reputations.

And just WTF is Grim Reaper even talking about? It has been widely reported for months that the Presidential Commission on SCOTUS will not recommend adding justices the Supreme Court. Biden’s Supreme Court commission signals opposition to adding justices:

On the issue that has arguably had the most calls from Democrats in relation to reforms, adding justices, the commission says an ideological balance might not be a “desirable goal.” The analysis bases this claim on the fact that other political branches are not balanced and requiring that level of responsiveness would not necessarily help the court better reflect the body politic. 

“A balanced bench could be preferable to the status quo for those observers of the court who perceive a significant mismatch between its composition today and the body politics,” the materials state. “But institutionalizing such a requirement could block or would not be preferable to father reaching change.” 

So Grim Reaper is making a straw man argument about “court packing.” He can rest comfortably knowing that he is the only one who has ever successfully packed the federal courts with radical right-wing judges. Everything he says in this op-ed is purely made up bullshit. One should ask why the editors of the Washington Post agreed to publish this partisan screed.

What is Grim Reaper really complaining about?

The Biden commission’s draft report was another attempt to appear moderate while doing radical things. The commission criticized the crudest form of court-packing — the simple addition of seats — but pivoted to an approving discussion of another idea that is barely less radical: canceling justices’ life tenure.

Do not be fooled. Even as the political left tries to spin the cancellation of life tenure as a half-step back from an even crazier opening bid, term limits would still be institutional vandalism. If a Republican administration came anywhere near flirting with such a proposal, the outrage from liberals would have been deafening.

Term limits has been part of serious discussion among court scholars and academics for years. It is hardly radical. It would require Congress to pass a constitutional amendment and to send it the states for ratification. It would take two-thirds of the states (i.e., 38 out of 50) for ratification. In other words, it ain’t happening. So what’s with the fake crocodile tears, Grim Reaper?

This partisan hack is not done with his partisan screed.

Even if Democrats fail at structurally changing the court, they could still succeed at applying improper pressure. The left wants to prey on justices’ instincts to protect their institution by having “court reform” hang over them like a sword of Damocles. The left hopes that a manufactured cloud of fake concerns about the court’s legitimacy may be enough to change which cases the court decides to hear, how it hears them and what rulings it hands down.

Congress has the authority to determine the structure, and even the jurisdiction, of the federal courts. Judicial reform is a regular function of the oversight function of Congress. There have been several periods of judicial reform in our history.

Me thinks the man doth protest too much. The Grim Reaper has packed the federal courts with radical right-wing judges (many of them rated unqualified by the ABA). He has created a monster, and he wants to protect his monster in perpetuity, long after he is dead and gone.

His feigned concerns about the “impartiality” and “credibility” of the court are laughable in the context of the damage that this evil GQP bastard has done to the federal courts over the years. The radical Republican Supreme Court that McConnell has created through his abuse of power and subversion of the Constitution is by no means impartial, and this radical court’s departures from its norms and precedents in pursuit of a partisan GQP agenda has ruined its credibility. Just 37% of Americans approve of the Supreme Court, an all-time low for the judicial body: poll.

This is squarely the fault of the monster that Mitch McConnell has created. Don’t blame Democrats.

The Washington Post editors should be ashamed for having published this unhinged partisan screed from the man who has done more to destroy American democracy than any other in modern American history.

I have oft repeated in several postings over the years, including this one, The ‘Enemy of The People,’ Mitch McConnell, is the real radical (snippet):

As Dana Milbank wrote, Mitch McConnell, the man who broke America:

By rights, McConnell’s tombstone should say that he presided over the end of the Senate. And I’d add a second line: “He broke America.” No man has done more in recent years to undermine the functioning of U.S. government. His has been the epitome of unprincipled leadership, the triumph of tactics in service of short-term power.

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As Charles Pierce says, There Is No More Loathsome Creature Walking Our Political Landscape Than Mitch McConnell:

He doesn’t have the essential patriotism god gave a snail. He pledges allegiance to his donors, and they get what they want. He’s selling out his country, and he’s doing it in real-time and out in the open. This is worse than McCarthy or McCarran ever were. Mitch McConnell is the the thief of the nation’s soul.

As historian Christopher Browning has written, “If the US has someone whom historians will look back on as the gravedigger of American democracy, it is Mitch McConnell.” The Suffocation of Democracy.