Who Runs the Senate Not McConnell: The NRA — McConnell's Own Words

Sen. Majority “Leader” (a term I use loosely): Mitch McConnell (R-KY)

(Sole possession of the NRA)

Supreme Court justices are nominated by the president and appointed with the advice and consent of the National Rifle Association, according to McConnell as stated on FOX.

He offered this unusual view of the confirmation process during an interview in response to a question from FOX Sunday host Chris Wallace, who asked if Senate Republicans would consider the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court after the election if Hillary Clinton were to prevail.

McConnell bluntly responded that he “can’t imagine that a Republican majority in the United States Senate would want to confirm, in a lame duck session, a nominee opposed by the NRA [and] the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB).” 

McConnell’s statement is significant for several reasons:

1.  It suggests that his previously stated position that “this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President,” is a sham.

2.  It is unlikely that the NRA or the NFIB would change their positions on a nominee just because Hillary Clinton were president and not Barack Obama.

It is also worth examining exactly who McConnell would give a veto power over nominees.  

For example, the NFIB was a plaintiff in NFIB v. Sebelius, the first Supreme Court case seeking to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA/Obamacare). That lawsuit called upon the justices to impose limits on federal power that even the late Justice Antonin Scalia refused to impose in previous cases (although it’s worth noting that Scalia abandoned his previous principled stance when given the opportunity to cast a vote against Obamacare). When the NFIB isn’t fighting to take health care away from millions of Americans, it fights equally hard against raising the minimum wage.

The NRA, meanwhile, is known for its increasingly absolutist opposition to gun safety laws. Though Garland’s record on guns is fairly thin, the NRA opposes Garland’s nomination based on two cases he considered as a judge.

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Sen. McConnell holding this view must, in my opinion, be censured and expelled from the Senate. He is a disgrace to the office and the country. McConnell has to go.

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