After Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced that he would lead Republicans in obstructing President Obama yet again, this time by leading his party to abdicate their Constitutional duties, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) reminded McConnell that President Obama’s will is the will of the people and that he won by five million votes.
Senator Warren said in a statement, “Senator McConnell is right that the American people should have a voice in the selection of the next Supreme Court justice. In fact, they did – when President Obama won the 2012 election by five million votes.”
Then Warren proceeded to remind McConnell about that thing Republicans are always claiming to worship – the Constitution, specifically Article II, “Article II Section 2 of the Constitution says the President of the United States nominates justices to the Supreme Court, with the advice and consent of the Senate.”
Wait for it… “I can’t find a clause that says ‘…except when there’s a year left in the term of a Democratic President.'”
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Warren reminded McConnell that Republicans took an oath just like Democrats did and if they fail to do their duty, their talk about loving the Constitution is empty, “Senate Republicans took an oath just like Senate Democrats did. Abandoning the duties they swore to uphold would threaten both the Constitution and our democracy itself. It would also prove that all the Republican talk about loving the Constitution is just that – empty talk.”
Senator Warren is absolutely correct. The idea that Republicans get to obstruct the power of the presidency invested in Obama by the people in not one but two elections is outrageous.
Republicans think that obstructing President Obama’s nominee is good politics and will help them in the 2016 election. However, 2016 was already set to be a tough year for Republicans in the Senate. Mitch McConnell must be suffering from Fox induced epistemic closure if he doesn’t see that these tactics will not sell in blue or moderate states.
Furthermore, as I pointed out last night, if Republicans want to run against President Obama again, they just found a way to do it. And since they have never come close to beating him, that doesn’t seem very smart.
The next time a Republican waves their pocket version of the Constitution around as they drone on about the debt as an excuse for why they have not shown up to work for weeks, someone ought to remind them that they can’t pick and choose what works for them from the Constitution like they do from the Bible.
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