It is a new low, even for Mitch McConnell

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McConnell has declared he received’t let Sen. Dianne Feinstein have her wish to be temporarily replaced on the Senate Judiciary Committee whereas she continues to get better from a critical sickness. McConnell’s excuse? He mentioned on the Senate ground Tuesday that he’s sticking up for her as evil Democrats are attempting to pressure her out. He says she’s a “titanic determine” and “stateswoman” and that “similar far-left voices” are attempting to “transfer her off of the Judiciary Committee indefinitely. Indefinitely.”

By no means thoughts that Feinstein requested to get replaced. It was her concept. “I perceive that my absence might delay the necessary work of the Judiciary Committee,” she mentioned in an announcement when she made that request. “So I’ve requested Chief Schumer to ask the Senate to permit one other Democratic senator to briefly serve till I’m capable of resume my committee work.”

McConnell didn’t spend all of his time defending Feinstein in opposition to her personal needs. He made it abundantly clear that it’s about preserving the Trump-packed federal judiciary.

“The supposed emergency is that Senate Democrats are unable to push by way of a small fraction of their nominees which are so excessive, so excessive and so unqualified that they can’t win a single Republican vote in Committee,” McConnell mentioned.

“Senate Republicans is not going to participate in sidelining a short lived absent colleague off a committee simply so Democrats can pressure by way of their very worst nominees,” added McConnell.

This, once more, from the person who engineered a courtroom full of Trump nominees the American Bar Affiliation deemed unqualified, with right-wing extremist nutjobs like District Courtroom Decide Matthew Kacsmaryk, who most just lately declared himself more of an expert on drug safety than the Meals and Drug Administration.

If you wish to know the way tight a rein McConnell has over his convention on this, take a look at what that well-known reasonable Sen. Mitt Romney had to say about it: “They’d like Republicans to assist them velocity the appointment of extra liberal justices? Sure—when hell freezes over.”

Setting apart Feinstein’s needs represents a brand new low from McConnell. This precise scenario is unprecedented, no less than in trendy Senate historical past, however that is the primary time one convention has completely denied the opposing get together a committee seat. That is simply primary stuff about how the physique works, decided by the organizing decision at the start of the Senate. Management of each events divides up what number of seats on every committee the bulk and minority get, and the composition of these memberships is determined by every get together convention. Interval. Till now.

McConnell has now destroyed the entire most elementary norms and traditions of the Senate, leaving Democrats fully flat-footed, once more. Whereas he was engineering that, Dick Durbin, the chair of the Judiciary Committee, was pleading for his Republican colleagues to indicate “kindness” and to acknowledge that Feinstein is “in a fragile a part of her life and her Senate service. They need to stand by her and provides her a dignified departure.”

That’s not going to occur. At this level, even when Feinstein have been to resign (or worse), McConnell shouldn’t be going to permit her seat on this committee to be crammed, simply as he refused to permit a affirmation listening to for Merrick Garland in the course of the Obama administration. It’s time for Schumer, Durbin, and the remainder of the Democrats to cease taking part in protection and get as cutthroat and ruthless as McConnell in taking part in offense.

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It is by no means too early to begin speaking in regards to the Home! Becoming a member of us on this week’s version of The Downballot is Inside Elections’ Jacob Rubashkin, who affords his ideas on the general taking part in discipline and a variety of key contests. Jacob explains why Lauren Boebert might need a better time of it in her doubtless rematch, how some candidates have a “particular sauce” that permits them to maintain profitable tough districts, and why he thinks Mary Peltola is favored for re-election regardless of Alaska’s persistent crimson lean.