Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell conceded that the bruising fight to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh wasn’t the chamber’s finest hour but insisted it…
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell conceded that the bruising fight to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh wasn’t the chamber’s finest hour but insisted it will recover.
“The Senate’s not broken,” the Kentucky Republican said on “Fox News Sunday.”
He compared the contentious battle over Kavanaugh, who was accused of sexual misconduct, with his decision not to even bring former President Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland up for a vote.
“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 of America.”
“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,” McConnell continued.
He also said he agrees with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer that the hearings were a low point for the chamber but concluded that was because of lawmakers on the other side of the aisle.
He blamed Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee for leaking the name of Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford and accused them of trying to “intimidate our members into opposing this good man’s nomination.”
He praised his Republican colleagues.
“We stood up to the mob. We established the presumption of innocence is so important. I’m proud of my colleagues. This is an important day for the United States Senate,” McConnell said.
But he dodged a question about whether he would treat a nominee named by President Trump in the final year of his term the same way he handled the Garland nomination.
“The answer to your question is: We’ll see if there’s a vacancy in 2020,” he said.
The Senate voted to confirm Kavanaugh on Saturday by a 50-48 vote with all Republican senators backing him, except for one who was attending his daughter’s wedding and another who voted “present.”
One Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, voted for Kavanaugh.
