Frontline PBS: 'How Mitch McConnell Helped Pave The Way For Donald Trump’s Presidency

Source:PBS- then U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Republican, Kentucky)

"Through his actions in 2016, “Mitch McConnell brought about the election of someone who, in almost every particular, he deplored,” conservative columnist George Will says in this excerpt from the new FRONTLINE documentary "McConnell, the GOP & the Court."

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Among those actions: Blocking any Senate consideration of then-President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee after Justice Antonin Scalia died months before the 2016 presidential election -- and later placing his support behind Trump, framing Scalia's Supreme Court seat as a central issue, as this excerpt explores.

“There was a lot of skepticism on the right of what Donald Trump was, and holding that Supreme Court seat open just as a political matter reminded Republicans, we can’t leave to chance that Hillary Clinton might put a liberal on the court,” Scott Jennings, a McConnell political adviser, says in the excerpt. 

“McConnell, the GOP & the Court” traces the path to power of an unlikely political leader who has dramatically reshaped the Supreme Court — and whose decisions helped usher in an era of deep polarization in both the U.S. and the Republican party." 

From PBS 

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From Wikipedia 

Whenever I hear a story about Senate Republican Mitch McConnell, especially as it relates to the U.S. Federal judicial system, I'm even more convinced that I would never want the left-wing in America (in and out of the Democratic Party) to ever be in charged of a local car wash, let alone in charge of any government in this country, especially the Federal Government. Because for the simple fact that they don't believe in governing. As much as they talk about the need for government and how much they believe in and support government and democracy, they don't actually believe in governing and they don't know how to govern.

I'm one of the first people to tell you that I don't like Mitch McConnell, simply because of his pure and open political hypocrisy. He simply believes that Democrats, especially in Congress, should be held to higher standards than Republicans in Congress. When he's the Senate Minority Leader, he uses every rule and tool that he has to try to stop Democrats from passing their agenda. But then when he's Majority Leader, he changes the rules to to help himself and the Republican Party. 

Leader McConnell was against the Senate filibuster on nominations, before he was in favor of it and then he becomes Majority Leader and has a Republican President, now he's against the filibuster on nominations. 

In 2016, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announces that the 2016 presidential election should decide who'll fill Justice Antonin Scalia's seat, not President Barack Obama, who still had about a year left on his term. Then in 2020, when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg dies, he goes out-of-his-way to make sure that President Donald Trump gets to fill her seat with a Republican, before that election is decided and there's a new Congress.

But to go back to my original point about left-wing Democrats not believing in governing and perhaps not even government at all: if they had bothered to turn out and vote in 2014, Senate Democrats at the very least could've minimized their losses, perhaps not keep control of the Senate, but they wouldn't have lost 9 seats. 

And if the far-left had bothered to turn out and vote Democratic in 2016, worst case scenario, Hillary Clinton gets elected President in 2016, no President Donald Trump, and at the very least, Democrats win back the Senate that year. And now a President Hillary Clinton probably gets 3 Supreme Court nominations through a Democratic Senate, just in her first term alone. 

As bad as Mitch McConnell might be from a personal standpoint, when it comes to character and honesty as a political leader, especially as one of the most successful Congressional leaders in American history, he's still just on person. The Democratic Party was always big enough to stop and defeat him, if they had just bothered to turn out and vote for the Democrats.

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