That would all suit me fine. This would be a good step toward satisfying my increasingly radicalized blood-lust. Throw in Matt Gaetz, Gym Jordan, and most of Trumps present and past cabinet, DeJoy, and a bunch of obvious others too.
One of the mentioned candidates is 48 years old. She could be a Supreme for 40 years! That is FAR more impact than any 2-year period between Senate elections.
Moreover, given how it is constituted, conservatives/small states will always have an advantage in the Senate.
In terms of the long game, tilting the SCt further in your direction is a no-brainer. It is hard to imagine any personal advantage any individual senator would obtain that would outweigh that.
McConnell is truly evil, but he will be a Senator for as long as he wishes to remain one. Perhaps his greatest evil has been in prostituting the rest of his party in the Senate. There USED to be Republicans I could respect.
A union organizer I work with hates being told “Keep fighting the good fight.” He’s not fighting the good fight, he insists: he’s fighting to win.
In that sense, McConnell is fighting to win. Everything he says is geared, not to reflect deeply-held principles, but to advance his agenda. If he thought he’d be able to appoint one extra supreme court judge by declaring himself a lizard-person from the planet Xerox, there’d be copy toner on his tongue within fifteen minutes.
What’s astonishing to me isn’t his hypocrisy: it’s that people are surprised by it, or worse yet fooled by it. I’ve seen freshly cleaned windows less transparent than his lies.
Don’t expect McConnell to fight the good fight. He’ll kick your ass if you’re expecting that. If you want to defeat him, you gotta fight to win.
I’m not surprised or fooled by his hypocrisy. I found it insulting that he’d think I’d believe him. I do bring it up now, though, as it is fun to point it out.
In my most paranoid moments, I wonder if he refused to hold a vote on Obama’s 2016 SCOTUS pick because he knew the fix was in for Trump.
This year, his Russian masters have told him it’s not gonna happen, so he has to rush a pick through.
In politics, the less you plan to do about something, the more you must talk about it.
Yes, well said, Nemo.
Like the old saying(s): war is politics by other means, and politics is war by other means.
What matters in the end, is having power.
I don’t think that even the Russians believed Trump would win; I think they saw an opportunity to use Trumpism as a social and political wedge, but not in their wildest dreams did they believe he would win until he got closer to the nomination. At that point? Yeah, they went all in, but McConnell probably believed that Ted Cruz or other Republicans would give Hillary a challenge. From Mitch’s point of view, it was probably worth it to stall the nomination and hope for the best.
It’s not us that are fooled by it, and the only thing that I find surprising at all is that his supporters are.
I think a bigger problem is that we recognize it, but too many voters (or non-voters) quickly accept the futility of the situation. We accept hypocrisy. We accept corruption. We don’t think it matters anymore. That’s why people like McConnell get away with it.
When they made those claims in 2016, I was really hoping that they would not be given the opportunity to show their hypocrisy, but I knew that if they were, they would.
There was never a doubt in my mind they would lie their asses off and change their rationale. I think they’re lying just to show us that they can lie and that there’s not a fucking thing we can do to stop them.
Yes, this is very well stated. My impression is that in the past, this behavior was not as pervasive.
I think that Moscow Mitch is smart enough to know that one day, perhaps very soon, the GOP gravy train will end. He’s simply trying to get away with as much as he can for as long as he can, with impunity. Consequences be damned, even for the future of the GOP. Long as he gets what he wants now. After all, he’s not going to live forever and this will be his greatest achievement - to have gotten away with all of it.
I think the GOP knows that they don’t represent popular opinion, but there are two ways to respond to that reality. On one hand, a minority party in a democracy can tweak its platform to make its positions more politically palatable; or, it can keep the same positions and simply do whatever it takes make sure that political outcomes depend less on popular elections. The Republicans have adopted the latter approach for a while now, and they will keep doing it. What’s more, they will become more and more extreme in their anti-democratic behavior. Look at the trajectory of anti-democracy, carried to its natural, logical end. It’s not an acceptance that they will eventually lose in the marketplace of ideas; rather, it is the death of democracy itself.
It does make me wonder why evangelicals would follow them. These are certainly not people who think that they will ever have to answer for their sins to a greater power.
Evangelicals believe that they are right, the same way that Al Qaeda believes they’re right, too.
Religion is never about maximizing social democracy, equality and freedom. Why wouldn’t they support an authoritarian who caters to them and needs their support?
How one longs for the days when everyone was jumping on your face and screaming that you were being too pessimistic and that things could NEVER get that bad! You didn’t want to be right (neither did I). 
Let’s face it, we can’t even imagine at this point how bad it’s going to get. 
Yeah, back in 2017 and 2018, a lot of what we’re discussing now was something that might happen later. But later is now. We’ve already passed through democracy’s ‘checkpoints’: the separation of powers, the politicization of the bureaucracy & civil service, impeachment, and so forth. We’re at the last checkpoint. The election itself. It’s the last wire for democracy’s intruders to cut.