Wallace presses McConnell to vow a hold on next SCOTUS nom if it’s an election year. His answer re-traumatizes Dems!

Instead of celebrating a hard-fought victory, Fox News host Chris Wallace is already asking Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to make concessions on the next Supreme Court nominee Republicans might someday be entitled to.

Watch the full interview below:

Wallace began the interview Sunday with the Senate leader by playing a clip of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer kvetching about the GOP-led Senate’s decision two years ago to not confirm then-President Barack Hussein Obama’s replacement for deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

Instead McConnell had left the seat open to let whoever won the presidential election choose Scalia’s successor. McConnell resents this, as evidenced by what he said on the Senate floor last Tuesday.

“No American should accept his admonishments about delay. He’s the master of delay … Compared to 10 months. Leaving the Scalia seat open. Who are we kidding?” he said, citing the GOP’s complaints about Democrat efforts to derail Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

McConnell rebutted this rhetoric Sunday by noting that, one, he had been following a long-established precedent by refusing to confirm Obama’s pick during an election year, and two, his refusal to not confirm wasn’t equivalent to the “search and destroy” campaign waged by the left.

“We didn’t attack Merrick Garland’s background and try to destroy him, we didn’t go on a search and destroy mission,” he said. “We simply followed the tradition in America which is that if you have a party of a different– a senate of a different party than the president you don’t fill a vacancy created in a presidential year. That went all the way back to 1888.”

Instead of dropping the issue, Wallace then decided to become an advocate for left-wing talking points by haranguing McConnell about the mythical “Garland standard.”

“When you blocked Merrick Garland’s nomination from President Obama, you basically said that we don’t do this in a presidential election year, and that we wait until the election and then whoever the people choose, they get to pick the Supreme Court nominee,” he said.

His implication was that because the Senate majority leader had refused to confirm SCOTUS nominee Mererick Garland in 2016, he should abide by the same principle if a chance to confirm another SCOTUS pick appears in 2020. But would he?

McConnell replied by suggesting that, according to historical precedence, the decision of whether or not to confirm ultimately lies with the party in control of Congress.

“You have to go back to 1880 to find the last time a vacancy created in a presidential election year on the Supreme Court was confirmed by a Senate of a different party than the president,” he said.

Since Republicans controlled Congress in 2016, they had the right to not confirm Obama’s choice. And if they wind up still controlling Congress in 2020, they’ll have the right to confirm Trump’s choice.

This answer did not seem to please Wallace. Nor did it please liberals on social media, who lashed out with their usual dose of hysterical outrage:

The claim by the last Twitter user that McConnell “cheats” is false. It’s long been noted that “elections have consequences.” If Democrats want to stop Trump from installing another SCOTUS justice, they must simply win elections. And they for whatever reason are unable to do that, then sorry, but that’s their fault — not the fault of Republicans like McConnell.

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Vivek Saxena

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