‘The Enemy of The People’ promises to ‘go nuclear’ to blow up the Senate

So our authoritarian wannabe tinpot dictator suggested during a press gaggle on Tuesday that he wants to “get rid of judges” who disagree with his autocratic executive orders. ‘Authoritarian nutjob’: Outrage grows as Trump proclaims ‘we have to get rid of judges’ in latest border threat:

“We need to get rid of chain migration, we need to get rid of catch and release, and visa lottery, and we have to do something with asylum, and to be honest with you – have to get rid of judges,” Trump said casually, not realizing – or not caring – that he is literally talking about taking away civil rights, the civil rights of people who are fleeing violence, gangs, drugs, and oppression.

“Every time you catch somebody that’s come illegally into your country, and they bring them to a court,” Trump railed, again attacking civil rights.

“Federal judges have ruled against the Trump administration at least 63 times over the past two years, an extraordinary record of legal defeat that has stymied large parts of the president’s agenda on the environment, immigration and other matters.” The real reason the Trump administration is constantly losing in court: “In case after case, judges have rebuked Trump officials for failing to follow the most basic rules of governance for shifting policy, including providing legitimate explanations supported by facts and, where required, public input.”

Ah, but Republicans have a “Plan B.”

In recent weeks, lazy media villagers have been parroting the GOPropaganda line that Democrats want to engage in “court packing” in proposing to expand the Supreme Court.

But the real court packing scheme that media villagers have glossed over for years comes from “The Enemy of The People,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. His single-minded goal is to pack the federal courts with young right-wing ideologues who have the seal of approval from the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation, so that they will be on the bench for the next generation (or longer) to thwart Democratic reforms after the GOP eventually loses political power. This is Mitch McConnell’s long-game for his anti-democratic policy of “total obstruction.”

As I have previously outlined, The ‘Enemy of The People,’ Mitch McConnell, is the real radical (excerpt):

When Barak Obama was elected president at the height of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and Americans were truly frightened, Mitch McConnell summed up his plan to the National Journal: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” McConnell was the architect of partisan “total obstruction” at a time of great national crisis.

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.

When Justice Antonin Scalia died on Feb. 13, 2016, within the hour of his death, McConnell said the Senate shouldn’t confirm his replacement until after the election. “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president,” McConnell said.

This unprecedented judicial blockade was an unconstitutional usurpation of the prerogatives of the president to fill judicial vacancies (and was part of the broader scheme of judicial blockade of Obama’s nominees for all other federal judicial vacancies). The Washington Post reported that McConnell boasted to constituents at an August 2016 political event in his home state of Kentucky, “One of my proudest moments was when I looked at Barack Obama in the eye and I said, ‘Mr. President, you will not fill this Supreme Court vacancy,’” he said to cheers at the annual Fancy Farm Picnic.

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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.

John Nichols recently opined, Mitch McConnell Is Killing the Senate:

No one has done more to diminish the deliberative character of the chamber than Mitch McConnell. He has invariably put partisanship—and service to the money that maintains his party’s current dominance—ahead of any duty he might feel to uphold democracy. And as the Senate’s majority leader, he is uniquely positioned to render it so dysfunctional as to be nothing window dressing for the White House. And he has done just that.

Which brings us to the latest malign attempt by “The Enemy of The People” to destroy the Senate and to pack the federal courts with unvetted and unqualified right-wing ideologues. Joan McCarter writes at Daily Kos, McConnell prepares to detonate another nuclear bomb in the Senate for Trump:

This week Mitch McConnell is going to further destroy the Senate. He’s going nuclear, meaning he’s forcing a rules change with a simple majority vote: to dramatically reduce the debate time between when the Senate moves a nominee forward for consideration and when the nomination gets a final vote, from 30 hours to as few as two for most nominees to federal district courts and sub-Cabinet-level executive branch positions. Democrats have used those rules to try to stem the onslaught of appallingly unqualified and should-be-disqualified deplorables into government and the judiciary.

That McConnell’s doing it isn’t such a great surprise. The jaw-droppingly shameless argument he’s using to do it is. In an op-ed for Politico, Time to Stop the Democrats’ Obstruction, that man who somehow still hasn’t been struck down by lightning where he stands says it’s because “of the historic obstruction Senate Democrats have visited upon President Trump’s nominees for two years and counting.” He complains that “for the first time in memory, a minority has exploited procedure to systematically obstruct a president from staffing up his administration.”

Clearly McConnell has memory problems. Or maybe it doesn’t count when it’s the majority that’s exploiting procedure.

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Do we even need to talk about Merrick Garland, the Obama Supreme Court nominee McConnell refused to even meet with? Or the all the judges that McConnell is pushing through over the objections of their home-state senators, if those senators happen to be Democrats? Or just every single goddamned thing McConnell has done in his wretched career as leader of the Senate Republicans?

There’s one answer: take the Senate away from him and be just as ruthless and creative in restoring it as he’s been in destroying it.

Steve Benen says: “[I]f you’re not a loyal Republican partisan, and your principal concern is with the health of the American political system, McConnell’s work has earned him a role as one of this generation’s most consequential villains.”

As I have said before, “Mitch McConnell belongs in the pantheon of the worst senators in U.S. history. He is demonstrably a villain who believes in authoritarianism, as long as his party and he remains in control. No one has abused the rules of the Senate and American democracy more than has Mitch McConnell. History will not remember him kindly, nor should it. His name should be spoken with disdain as we do for those most despised villains in American history.”

UPDATE: The evil GOP bastard did it. Senate Republicans Go ‘Nuclear’ to Speed Up Trump Confirmations.