Mitch McConnell, the man who broke America
“No majority leader wants written on his tombstone that he presided over the end of the Senate,” the minority leader said.
.. Actually, they were uttered in 2013, by then-Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), when Democrats pushed through a similar filibuster change for lesser nominations.
That McConnell did a 180 on the topic — going from the institutional defender of the filibuster to the man who destroyed it — is unsurprising.
.. 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.
.. Back in 1994, McConnell lamented to the conservative Heritage Foundation that Republicans hadn’t used the filibuster enough: “I am a proud guardian of gridlock. I think gridlock is making a big comeback in the country.”
.. By 2013, for example, 79 of Obama’s nominees had been blocked by filibusters, compared with 68 in the entire previous history of the Republic.
.. While other Republicans have at times been willing to criticize President Trump’s outrages, McConnell has been conspicuously quiescent. Although his predecessors at least attempted collegiality, McConnell practices no such niceties (recall his “nevertheless, she persisted” silencing of Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren).
.. asking for a vote on a debt-ceiling proposal and then trying to filibuster it;
.. Two years ago, when a Democrat was in the White House, McConnell said he would only abolish filibusters of Supreme Court justices if there were 67 votes for such a change. This week, he employed a maneuver to do it with 51 votes.