It appears they KNOW or at least strongly expect they're going to lose the election. Otherwise, why would they be freaking out today about rushing through a successor to #RBG?
They KNOW they're "fucked," to paraphrase Donald Trump himself, about himself.
From the Washington Post,
Jockeying over President Trump’s next Supreme Court pick ramped up Monday as the president pledged to unveil his candidate to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg [RBG is irreplaceable, but eventually there will be a successor] by the end of the week and conservative groups began aligning behind a push to quickly confirm the eventual nominee.This needs to go viral. pic.twitter.com/FbD4iQj2t8
— Matt Rogers 🗳 (@Politidope) September 21, 2020
We can and must make their self-fulfilling prophesy come to pass.
* Democrats may or may not be able to stall the process. The PEOPLE may be able to put immense pressure on the senate to block confirmation. But we KNOW that this GOP version of a Hail Mary pass is not the last word regardless of whether or not a Dominionist is confirmed.
Stay tuned.
In a post sent today from The Bulwark by Jonathan V. Last, he makes essentially the same point,
The SCOTUS Vote Is a Sign of Republican Weakness
They think they're going to get blown out on November 3.
Here are the two data points that explain why Republicans are going to push a SCOTUS nomination through before November 3:
62 percent of Americans say the winner of the election should pick the next nominee.
Joe Biden leads the national polling average by +7 points.
That’s it. That’s your explanation.
The polling on who should be making this SCOTUS pick is pretty definitive. Only 23 percent of respondents said that Trump should be the one making the nomination.
So why would Republicans rush into a high-profile fight where they’re on the wrong side of public opinion[and they KNOW it] by nearly 3-to-1? And in the process weaken their presidential nominee and make a bunch of vulnerable senators even more vulnerable?
Because they believe Trump is going to lose.
If Republicans were confident that Trump was going to win, they’d hold off on the SCOTUS vote. They wouldn’t expose senators such as McSally or Gardner.
If Republicans thought that Trump had a realistic chance to win, they’d also hold off on the vote. Because they’d be scrapping for any issue that might tilt 50-50 odds in their favor.
(And besides, they could tell themselves that if this gamble didn’t pay off, then they could always vote on the nomination in the lame duck session.)
But the decision to vote now tells us that Mitch McConnell and the Republican caucus have decided that Trump is highly likely to lose—and that they are likely to lose their majority, too.
Which is why they have to push the vote through before the election—because doing it in a lame-duck after a large-scale loss would invite apocalyptic levels of public backlash.
In other words: This is a decision based not on strength, but on weakness and fear. And you know what the old green guy says about fear:
You might think of Senate Republicans as a bunch of bank robbers, running around in the vault, stuffing every last wad of cash they can grab down the front of their pants because they hear the sirens and they know that the cozzers will be on the scene any minute.
One more thing: In all of the SCOTUS drama of the last few days, you don’t see a lot of “more in sorrow than in anger” arguments from Republicans saying, something like:
Instead what you see is closer to . . . glee.Yes, this is worrisome. Yes, it’s a judgment call. And yes we understand that it looks bad and that there will be adverse consequences for the court and the country if we hold this vote. But for reasons X, Y, and Z, voting on Trump’s nominee is still the most prudent course.
It’s almost as if Republicans are relishing jamming through a last-minute vote even more than they would a normal, orderly confirmation process.
It’s almost as if the norm-busting is part of the appeal.
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