On February 13, 2016, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died. 2016 was a presidential election year, and Scalia’s death occurred nine months prior to that election.
President Barack Obama nominated a moderate federal judge, Merrick Garland, to fill Scalia’s seat on the Supreme Court. However, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to hold a confirmation hearing. McConnell said:
“The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.”
And in something so ironic that if it appeared in a political novel, your reaction would be that it was too contrived to be believable, McConnell invoked the so-called “Biden Rule” as further justification for why the Senate would not consider the nomination of Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court in an election year.
Yes, the “Biden Rule,” as in then Vice President Joe Biden and the current Democratic opponent running against Donald Trump.
Then Senator Biden argued in a speech in June 1992 that President George H.W. Bush should wait until after the election to appoint a replacement if a Supreme Court seat became vacant during the summer of an election year.
McConnell used Biden’s argument from that 1992 speech to explain why, in 2016, he intended to block President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court pick in an election year.
“The Senate will continue to observe the Biden Rule so that the American people have a voice in this momentous decision.”
Fast forward four years.
Last night, after the news that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had passed away, and only a month and a half before the 2020 presidential election, that same Mitch McConnell is singing a very different song:
“President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.”
Well, Mitch, it’s time to invoke the real Biden Rule. After learning last night of RBG’s death, Biden said this:
“… the voters should pick the president, and the president should pick the justice for the Senate to consider.”
Mitch McConnell is the personification of hypocrisy and he should not be permitted to get away with this. But given the actions over the last four years of the spineless, soulless Republicans who hold the majority in the U.S. Senate, he probably will.
This, That, and the Other 
It is so disgusting what “they” are getting away with.
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😡
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I have a very uneasy feeling about the outcome of the death of Ruth Bader will cause the upcoming election.
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I share that uneasy feeling.
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This is a travesty of justice.
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It’s disgusting and shameful.
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Bless the memory of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She continues to serve her Country. Just before this election, her passing will help shine a light on, to illuminate the Republican Party’s holier-than-thou hypocrisy.
Our Democratic process started ending when Barack Obama became president. The Republican leaders vowed to do absolutely nothing that would help his presidency. They have done a good destroying our political system as we knew it. It is long past time to send the “my way or the highway” politicians down the road going out of town.
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I hope you’re right that RBG’s memory will do some good as we face a very uncertain future.
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I’d say it’s poetic justice
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It’s no justice at all.
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👍👍👍
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This is a scary horrid time in our history. And it gets worse every day.
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Yes, just when you think it can’t get any worse, it does.
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Absolutely
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I believe that the T-party is in a race against demographics. They are desperate to get racism set in concrete and the nation into a dictatorship before the majority becomes a minority.
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It’s very depressing.
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If they do get away with putting another judge on the court then the name of the republican party should be changed to the hypocrite party.
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That would be a more fitting name.
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So upsetting, her death. And of course the T people will try to take advantage. I am still mad about not letting Obama set up his choice. So depressing and frustrating. And tiring.
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I am too. It’s one of the emblems of the continued VERY-present racism in our country.
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Very tiring.
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R’s have become such hypocrites about “family values,” “pro life,” and every other thing. Mitch and Lindsey are the perfect examples of people who will say any fucking thing
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She wasn’t even cold, and they started, like an hour later.
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They aren’t even trying to pretend anymore…
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No. I guess they feel they don’t have to.
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https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/09/ruth-bader-ginsburg-death-mitch-mcconnell.html
But I’ll be blunt: People are more willing to fight people who insult and degrade them than they are to fight mere “hypocrites.”
They ARE hypocrites, and that’s pretty damn bad in the Bible. (Ah-hem. I won’t speak the obvious on that one.) But perhaps they ARE even worse.
Nevertheless, I’ve noticed that some crazy amount of people who hang out in that realm don’t even seem to understand what the concept hypocritical means.
In fact, that might be part of or the crux of why they are worse than hypocrites. They’ve learned or decided hypocrite means someone who is on a different side from you.
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😡 Grrr!
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You know he will! Its politics! Wrong doing is all covered up!
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I really hope somehow the selection does not go through. Reminds me of the comic character Two Face.
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I’m not familiar with Two Face.
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He is from the Batman comics.
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Yeah, I Googled Two Face, but I don’t remember that character.
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Do you remember the guy who would flip a coin and said he makes his own fate? Later, we found out his coin was the same on both sides. (He was blond in the movie with Christian Bale as Batman. I don’t remember other versions.) He was the mayor, I think.
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Mitch McConnell, instigator of the new American war of independence, may not be voted from office but it would be equitable if America voted his Senate companions out. America vote. Vote blue in both House and Senate.
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✌️👍
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