Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer lashed out at what he called the hypocrisy of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s argument in an op-ed earlier this week that complained about Democrats' continued obstruction of President Donald Trump's judicial nominees.
In an op-ed of his own in Politico on Tuesday, Schumer said that for McConnell to brag recently about confirming more judges this quick than in any administration in history “and then complain about Democratic obstruction... is the height of hypocrisy.”
Schumer said ultra-conservative activists have been driving the Republican Party farther toward the extreme right over the last 40 years, but their policy agenda was too unpopular with mainstream voters to be passed through the legislative process.
So instead, according to Schumer, they decided to achieve their policy goals through the courts by launching a continued effort to pack the courts with very conservative judges with what McConnell has proudly called a “conveyor belt” of nominees with those views.
Schumer said Republicans abused forms of delay during President Barack Obama’s last two years in office, when the GOP-majority Senate confirmed fewer Circuit Court nominees than in any Congress in 40 years.
This technique reached a new low, according to Schumer, when they refused to even consider Obama’s 2016 nomination to the Supreme Court of widely respected U.S. Circuit Judge Merrick Garland, blocking it for almost a year, until after Obama’s second term ended.
To make matters worse, Schumer said McConnell took the opportunity to grease the conveyor belt even more with Trump in office, eliminating the longstanding requirement that senators be consulted about circuit court judicial nominees in their home states in order to “provide some healthy counterbalance against nominees who were outside the mainstream or lacking in proper qualifications.”
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