McConnell Reverses Course on Supreme Court Confirmation Rule to Favor His Party

The prolonged nomination battle has roiled American politics, disrupting the status quo on Capitol Hill and firing up both Republicans and opposition Democrats a month before the mid-terms.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell is openly expressing confidence the confirmation fight has dramatically boosted enthusiasm among his party’s base ahead of the November 6 midterm elections.

“We didn’t attack Merrick Garland’s background and try to destroy him”, McConnell said on “Fox News Sunday”.

“Of the various 1,200 appointments who come to us for confirmation, obviously the most important are the lifetime appointments to the courts and we prioritize handling President Trump’s outstanding nominees for the Supreme Court”. “I’m proud of my colleagues”. “I never predicted this”. “The democrats have become too extreme and too unsafe to govern”, Trump said.

The Senate, under McConnell held no hearings and even refused to meet with the nominee.

In the wake of the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, McConnell is singing another tune. “That’s not a hard call for me”. “Everyone knows when you just interview a small number of people and not the dozens of others who wanted to be interviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, it’s a sham”.

“The scope of the FBI’s. investigation was determined not by the administration but by us, this group”, he said.

Mr McConnell added: “The energy level is high”. It may take them much longer to regain their sanity. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who voted with the Republicans despite “reservations” about Kavanaugh’s character and the accusations against him. “The last 20 or so years I’ve been a homeowner in the state of Maine, so it’s not completely insane, ” she said. “I have to do what I think is right, and that is what I did”.

Talk will continue in the Senate and beyond on how to learn and grow from these last few weeks, but no good solutions are readily apparent. “But what you just said now was it’s a question of whether or not the party in control of the Senate is different than the president”.

Trump, last week in MS, attacked Ford’s story at length – drawing laughs from the crowd.

“Asked if Collins’ words were in fact insulting to Ford, Hirono responded, “[Collins] said herself said that she’s heard from so many survivors from her state and elsewhere. But I had one beer.

Walking a fine line, some conceded that they believed Ford was telling the truth that she was attacked at the party, but did not think the attacker was Kavanaugh.

But Maine’s senior senator was clearly pained by the notion that her confirmation vote for Kavanaugh means she is abandoning women’s rights issues, the TV stations reported.

“We have literally been under assault by the mob”.

“This is how I met Brett Kavanaugh, the boy who sexually assaulted me”.

Anger: The claims by Christine Blasey Ford divided the U.S. and sparked protests in her support.

Kavanaugh was sworn in as a justice on Saturday evening, in Washington, DC, after an extraordinarily fraught nomination that sparked angry protests, nailbiting votes, and a national reckoning about sexual assault allegations and who should be believed.

Collins questioned Rice’s connection to ME, saying Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that although Rice’s family has a home in ME, “she doesn’t live in the state of Maine”.

One of them was Sen. Susan Collins’ comments on Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, calling them “insulting”.