Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said that if the GOP wins control of the Senate in the 2022 midterms, he would block any Supreme Court nominee put forth by President Joe Biden in 2024, hinting that he would also block a nominee in 2023 if a seat on the Court opens.
According to Politico, McConnell cites his rule that a Senate controlled by the opposition Party to the President would have a duty to do such a thing, even though that only became the habit of Senates he’s led.
“I don’t think either party, if it controlled, if it were different from the president, would confirm a Supreme Court nominee in the middle of an election,” McConnell told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. “What was different in 2020 was we were of the same party as the president.”
The statement will likely add to calls for 82-year-old Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer to step down long before the 2022 midterm elections, while Democrats still hold control of the Senate. Democrats still feel the sting of McConnell pushing through the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett in the last year of the Trump Administration after the death of respected justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.
Hypocritically, McConnell quickly orchestrated a vote on Barrett even though it was an election year, the reason McConnell refused to consider the nomination of Merrick Garland to the seat once held by Antonin Scalia, who died in January 2016.