This year just keeps on getting worse

“My most fervent wish,” the justice said days before her death on Friday, “is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”

She may not be, but the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, and Donald Trump are going to give it a damned good try.

  Guardian

And Mitch McConnell is the guy who refused to even give Obama's nominee a hearing 10 months before the 2016 election.

[E]ven should Trump lose to Joe Biden on 3 November, and the Democrats take back the Senate, there is a lame duck period until the inauguration in late January. Republicans in the Senate require a simple majority to put a fifth solid conservative – if you take Chief Justice John Roberts for a wobbler, as some on the right do – on the highest court.

The statements and views of key Republican senators now come under the spotlight.

Lindsey Graham, chair of the judiciary committee and an avid Trump ally facing a tough re-election fight in South Carolina, said this in 2016, when McConnell was refusing to give Barack Obama’s pick to replace Antonin Scalia, Merrick Garland, even so much as a hearing:

I want you to use my words against me. If there’s a Republican president … and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said, ‘Let’s let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination.’”

And his words WILL be used against him. But he won't care, and it won't matter.*

Of course, the word of the average Republican senator – the average politician, to be fair – isn’t worth the tweet it’s written in or the microphone it’s hurriedly spoken into. A battle royale is on the way in Washington.

Mitch McConnell, the US senate majority leader, vowed on Friday to move forward quickly with Donald Trump’s nominee to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the supreme court.

  Guardian

Of course he did. The slime sucking goat.

Shortly after the 87-year-old justice’s death was announced, the Republican released a statement removing any doubt about his intention to act, though the timeline for doing so remained notably vague.

“Americans reelected our majority in 2016 and expanded it in 2018 because we pledged to work with President Trump and support his agenda, particularly his outstanding appointments to the federal judiciary.

Americans did no such thing. They routed the Republicans in 2018.

Once again, we will keep our promise,” McConnell said in a statement. “President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.”

Shameless.

Trump, facing a difficult re-election, has signalled a desire to quickly nominate a third justice.

Just days ago, Trump named a number of Republican senators he's considering. The worst of the worst: Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley, and Ted Cruz.

The death of one of the most prominent and celebrated supreme court justices in American history has suddenly transformed an already volatile election season into an all-out battle for control of every branch of government.

[...]

The decision will likely be met with outrage from Democrats, who are still furious over McConnell’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s nomination of judge Merrick Garland to replace the conservative justice Antonin Scalia, who died months before the 2016 election.

You think?

If Trump is successful in confirming a third nominee, the conservative bloc would dominate the nation’s highest court, likely for decades to come.

And provide Trump and McConnell their wet dream for the 2020 election: A supreme court to take their attempt to keep Trump in office to.

It was unclear if McConnell intended to push for a vote before the November election or wait until the lame-duck session, the period following the election but before the new president is sworn-in. Control of the Senate hangs in the balance, and already some of his members have voiced concern about the prospect of ramming through a nominee weeks before an election, particularly given McConnell’s position four years ago.

Susan Collins? The perpetually "concerned" senator?

Senator Susan Collins, one of the most vulnerable Republican incumbents, told the New York Times earlier this month that she would not seat a Supreme Court justice in October, arguing that it was “too close” to the election. Unless Trump was re-elected, she said, she would oppose confirming the president’s nominee in a lame-duck session.

She's losing her seat anyway.  Her only consideration is does she want her last act as Senator to be one of integrity or one of party above country? 

Shortly before Ginsburg’s death was announced, Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska, told a state radio station that she would not vote to confirm a new justice before the election. Explaining her rationale, she said it was the same logic McConnell applied to Obama’s final supreme court nominee.

[...]

Kelly Loeffler, a Georgia Republican attempting to beat back a strong challenge from her right, urged the president to appoint a new justice.

“Our country’s future is at stake & @realDonaldTrump has every right to pick a new justice before the election,” she wrote on Twitter. “I look forward to supporting a strict constructionist who will protect the right to life & safeguard our conservative values.”

Trump has blown through every conservative value there ever was.

McConnell has argued that the current situation is different from that of 2016. Then, Republicans controlled the Senate, the chamber that confirms supreme court nominees, while a Democrat occupied the White House. This time, he contends, the same party controls both branches, and therefore the confirmation should proceed.

Oh, yeah. That makes sense. WTF? 

Also, at the time, his reasoning was that the American people should be the ones to decide when they elect a new president. 

The lack of integrity in the modern Republican Party is astonishing.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

UPDATE:

*  And there it is...

No shame.

UPDATE:  Here are his words...

And now he's whinging about it.

UPDATE: