Yes, Of Course Mitch McConnell Is a Hypocrite

Chris Kleponis/CNP via ZUMA

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Mitch McConnell blockaded President Obama’s election-year nomination of Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court in 2016, but yesterday he smirked that if a position opened up in 2020 he’d go ahead and confirm it. Charles Cooke says this isn’t hypocritical:

McConnell has not actually reversed his position, which was not that Supreme Court vacancies should always be left open in presidential election years, but that vacancies should be left open in presidential election years when the president is of a different party than the majority in Senate.

That’s not how I remember it, so let’s go to the tape. Here’s what McConnell said, starting one hour after Justice Scalia’s death was announced:

February 13: “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.”

February 17: “Responding for McConnell [about a 1970 law review article McConnell wrote]…spokesman Robert Steurer said in an email this week that the senator’s article ‘was not about nominations made by a lame duck president for vacancies that didn’t arise until an election year. What he said on Saturday was that he believes the American people‎ should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court justice and that this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president, not that the president can’t nominate someone.’ ”

February 23: “My view, and I can now confidently say the view shared by virtually everybody in my conference, is that the nomination should be made by the president that the people elect in the election that’s now underway.”

And McConnell was actually one of the more restrained voices among Republicans. The rest of the caucus was routinely quoted as saying, essentially, fuck you, Obama, we’ll never consider one of your Democratic hacks. Either way, though, the official excuses didn’t say anything about the president and Senate being of different parties, even if that was the obvious subtext. The official excuse was that it was a nigh unbreakable tradition of the Senate to never fill a Supreme Court position that opened up in an election year, full stop.

Why does anyone bother defending McConnell on this? I’m not sure. McConnell has practically built his entire career on hypocrisy, and he’s never really tried to hide it. He just shrugs, says what he needs to say, and moves on. I don’t think he really expects or cares if anyone takes him seriously, but treats public explanations as mere tedious parts of his job. In reality, he believes that whoever’s in power should do whatever they can to get their way, and it’s naive to think there are any other considerations. He doesn’t need anyone’s defense on this score.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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