Donald Trump desperately needs a "win." His attack on a Syrian airfield was supposed to be one -- but the airfield was operating on the next day. On Friday, his nominee for the Supreme Court was confirmed -- but he had to break the rules to get his way. The man who helped him break the rules was Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell -- who four years earlier said this about what happened on Friday: “Breaking the rules to change the rules is un-American. I just hope the majority leader thinks about his legacy, the future of his party, and, most importantly, the future of our country before he acts.”
Dana Milbank writes in The Washington Post:
That McConnell did a 180 on the topic — going from the institutional defender of the filibuster to the man who destroyed it — is unsurprising. He has frequently shifted his views to suit the needs of the moment.
The record of the many times McConnell has changed his principles is really quite remarkable. In 1994,
he was fighting all attempts at campaign-finance reform and spending limits, championing disclosure of contributions as the antidote. But when the Supreme Court allowed unlimited “dark money” in campaigns without disclosure, McConnell reversed course and has fought all attempts to enact disclosure.
And when it came to filibustering Barack Obama's choices to fill court seats, consider these numbers:
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.
After Justice Antonin Scalia’s death was confirmed last year, it took McConnell less than an hour to say that the vacancy should be filled by the next president. He called keeping Obama’s nominee off the court “one of my proudest moments.”
McConnell has no respect whatsoever for Senate collegiality:
Although his predecessors at least attempted collegiality, McConnell practices no such niceties (recall his “nevertheless, she persisted” silencing of Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren). But most characteristic of McConnell is his tendency to shift his views to suit current exigencies (on the minimum wage, withdrawal from Iraq, earmarks, abortion, labor and civil rights) and his adroitness at gumming up the works: forcing clerks to spend hours reading a bill aloud on the floor; opposing immigration legislation he’d encouraged; asking for a vote on a debt-ceiling proposal and then trying to filibuster it; urging the Obama administration to support a bipartisan debt commission and then voting against it.
He and Trump make quite a pair. Together they represent the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the Republican Party.
Image: Huffington Post
