Bill Straub: McConnell’s refusal to even consider judicial nominee an indefensible position

WASHINGTON – The time has come, sadly, for the voters of the Commonwealth of Kentucky to acknowledge that they have, for the past 31 years, sent a hack – a cheap one at that – to represent their interests in Washington D.C.

That’s a bit of hyperbole, but only a bit. When he first arrived in the nation’s capital, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell made an honest effort to contribute to what he saw as the common good, representing the needs of folks from Pikeville to Paducah and taking a studied look at the nation’s ills.

But at some undetermined point along that path Addison Mitchell McConnell lost his way and has, to a greater degree than anyone now involved in the ongoing partisan conflicts, contributed to the fetid state of American politics.

He has become an embarrassment and, by extension, he is embarrassing the commonwealth. And it naturally raises the perennial question – Whatever happened to Mitch McConnell?

No doubt you have heard by now that McConnell couldn’t wait for the coroner to check Antonin Scalia’s vital signs before telling President Obama to suck eggs if he thought he was going to nominate a replacement for the late Supreme Court justice in his final year in office.

Less noted was his decision, as the self-realized Napoleon Bonaparte in the ersatz War on Coal, to scotch a deal intended to protect the 120,000 beneficiaries of the United Mine Workers Multiemployer Pension and Retiree Fund, which is drying up because of the willy-nilly bankruptcy declarations of various mining outfits.

As might be expected, Napoleon McConnell is sacrificing one of his primary divisions in the War on Coal at the behest of the bituminous barons who regularly help restock his campaign coffers.

Both the Supreme Court and pension situations show just how far McConnell has strayed from his early incarnation and devolved into something of a Javert to President Obama’s Jean Valjean.

Apparently unsatisfied with destroying the lower courts in the nation’s judiciary – the Senate confirmed only 11 of Obama’s judicial nominees last year, 71 are pending and judicial emergencies exist in 29 circuits and districts – McConnell is taking aim at the high court. After issuing words of praise for Scalia, he switched gears like an Indy racecar driver and announced, “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.”

As Mark Twain once noted, “Why, not even a burglar could have said it better.’’

To begin with, as has been stated hither and yon, although it apparently escaped McConnell’s notice, Obama was elected by a majority of voters in 2012 to a four-year term that ends on Jan. 20, 2017, meaning he still has more than 11 months remaining in his tenure. The Constitution that conservatives so avidly cling to certainly doesn’t, nor should it, prohibit Obama from forwarding a nominee for confirmation and the Senate should thereafter provide its advice and consent.

By natural extension of McConnell’s “thinking,’’ one-third of the Senate should be prohibited from voting on legislation this year because their terms end the first week of January – even before the president leaves office. And the House, where lawmakers are elected every two years, might as well go fishing, proving that even the worst of ideas make some sense.

There are practical considerations. As it is, it’s unlikely a new justice can be confirmed in time to join this year’s high court deliberations. The sort of delay espoused by McConnell places next year’s session in jeopardy as well. The court traditionally begins on the first Monday of October and runs to late June or early July. A new president would have to make a nomination after careful deliberations, conduct background checks and then send that man or woman through the Senate ringer – it took 87 days to confirm Justice Elena Kagan, the most recent addition to the court, and she shouldn’t have been that controversial.

What that means is the U.S. Supreme Court would have to make due with eight justices for quite a bit more than a year, likely leading to an incalculable number of 4-4 votes given the current make-up. McConnell can talk until he’s blue in the face but that situation does not serve the country well.

In an article for the American Constitution Society, Neil J. Kinkopf, professor of law at the Georgia State University College of Law, declared that, “History clearly shows that President Obama is within his constitutional authority in making such a nomination. History also supplies virtually no support for Senator McConnell’s plan to refuse to consider any Obama nomination.’’

Kinkopf found that presidents have made 22 nominations to fill Supreme Court vacancies during an election year and 13 lame duck nominations, meaning they were made after an election had chosen a new president but before that new president-elect was inaugurated.  At no time, he said, “does it appear that the Senate refused to consider a presidential nomination on the grounds that no nomination should be made.’’

McConnell is left defenseless. The only statement more ludicrous about the entire situation come from yet another upstanding example of Kentucky wit and wisdom, his sidekick and one-time laughable presidential contender, Sen. Rand Paul, a fellow Republican who opined Obama shouldn’t nominate a Scalia replacement because it constitutes a conflict of interest.

Huh?

This is yet another poorly disguised attempt by McConnell to delegitimize the Obama presidency, an administration he has endeavored to undermine from the get-go out of pure animus. This time, in his undying efforts to thwart the executive branch, the Supreme Court becomes collateral damage.

The UMWA situation is equally mean-spirited. West Virginia’s two senators, Joe Manchin, a Democrat, and Shelly Moore Capito, developed a bipartisan plan to shore up the pension fund by using excess funds from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Abandoned Mine Lands Fund and amend the COAL Act to cover miners whose companies have gone bankrupt.

For reasons he is keeping to himself, McConnell had the agreement struck from this year’s budget deal. And he has exhibited no inclination to bring the measure up for a vote any time soon, even though the fund could run out of cash by early Spring, jeopardizing the retired miners’ average $530 monthly benefit.

Mike Elk, in a story published in the website Media Workers Unite, reported that McConnell’s opposition stems from Joe Craft, of Lexington, a billionaire non-union coal magnate with Alliance Resource Partners and – SURPRISE! – a Super PAC donor.

Oh, that Mitch Bonaparte, selling out his mine worker soldiers in the War on Coal for a few bucks. But who do you suppose Eastern Kentucky coal miners, active and retired, voted for when McConnell last won election in 2014?

I would like to note here that I have been covering McConnell, on and off, since 1984, establishing me as one of the longest serving Mitch watchers in the media. We have always gotten along fairly well. I remember standing next to him in New Orleans in 1988, during an outdoor party for Kentucky delegates attending the Republican National Convention, when someone whispered in his ear that the GOP’s standard bearer, George H.W. Bush, had selected Sen. Dan Quayle, of Indiana, as his running mate. McConnell’s look of horror was something to behold.

McConnell is a smart man. Not exactly the life of the party, you understand, reserved and calculating describes him much better. He would probably make a good poker player.

The Mitch McConnell of those early years can barely be recognized in the Mitch McConnell of today. This McConnell made it his life’s goal to deny Obama a second term. This McConnell made it his goal to obstruct and delay any and all initiatives coming from the Democratic president, refusing to offer anything resembling a helping hand. And woe be to any Republican who crossed him.

This McConnell, perhaps more than anyone else, is responsible for the sad state of American politics. There have always been crazies involved in the process – Rep. Steve King, R-IA, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-TX, and the queen of them all, former congresswoman Michelle Bachmann – but McConnell has managed to tote the crazy into the mainstream.

And the nation suffers.

Washington correspondent Bill Straub served 11 years as the Frankfort Bureau chief for The Kentucky Post. He also is the former White House/political correspondent for Scripps Howard News Service. He currently resides in Silver Spring, Maryland, and writes frequently about the federal government and politics. Email him at williamgstraub@gmail.com.