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Opinion Why McConnell won't take the bait on the debt limit

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) speaks with reporters outside the White House on Tuesday. At right is House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) (Susan Walsh/AP)
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Clarity is a wonderful thing. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) almost always speaks directly to an issue. Lately, the issues have involved the federal debt limit and judicial confirmations.

Consider how McConnell has dealt with the current pressure to take charge of the Republican side and get a deal done to raise the debt limit. (A May 6 headline from NPR: “Biden and McConnell have a debt limit past. Can they deliver another late-inning save?”) The pressure has a way of distracting attention from a default that might loom in large part because of President Biden’s paralysis. Though Biden denies it, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) says the president refused for 97 days to negotiate on raising the debt limit, before they finally met on Tuesday.

McConnell refuses to take the bait. “Ultimately, an agreement will be reached between Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy and the country will not default,” McConnell declared on Tuesday, offering a variation on what he’s been saying for months. He had sat in on the Biden-McCarthy meeting at the White House, but clearly didn’t bring along a life preserver for his old Senate colleague.

Editorial Board: Here’s the debt limit compromise the U.S. needs

Nor was McConnell going to bend to pressure in April and allow Democrats to temporarily replace the ailing Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) on the Judiciary Committee so Biden’s judicial nominees could be confirmed. That’s what Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) wanted him to do, but McConnell’s message could not have been more direct: “The supposed emergency is the Senate Democrats are unable to push through the small fraction of their nominees who are so extreme, so extreme and so unqualified, that they cannot win a single Republican vote in committee.”

Turns out, it wasn’t such an emergency after all. Feinstein returned to Washington on Wednesday. The week before, she had put out a statement essentially making McConnell’s point: “The Senate continues to swiftly confirm highly qualified individuals to the federal judiciary, including seven more judicial nominees who were confirmed this week. There has been no slowdown.”

She added: “I’m confident that when I return to the Senate, we will be able to move the remaining qualified nominees out of committee quickly and to the Senate floor for a vote.” No emergency. McConnell sniffed out that ruse and stated the facts plainly: Republicans are not in the habit of helping Democrats confirm extremist judicial nominees, especially those who wouldn’t know a Brady motion from Tom Brady.

Senate judicial wars have a long history, of course. The modern era of these fights arguably began in 1969, when Democrats (with some Republican help) shot down President Richard M. Nixon’s nomination of the eminently qualified Judge Clement Haynsworth to replace the disgraced Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas. Then there was the mugging of Judge Robert H. Bork (also eminently qualified) by Senate Democrats in 1987, thwarting President Ronald Reagan’s nominee.

Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman: Democrats finally seem terrified of GOP debt limit lunacy. About time.

The judicial battles have only grown worse over the past two decades. First came Democratic filibusters of many judges nominated by President George W. Bush. Then, Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) used the “nuclear option” in 2013, under President Barack Obama, to pack the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by lowering the threshold for confirmation to 51 votes.

McConnell has several dark nicknames — among them “The Grim Reaper” and “Midnight Mitch” — but the more straightforward “‘Sauce for the Goose, Sauce for the Gander’ Mitch” might be more appropriate. After Reid’s hardball play while leader, McConnell gave it right back to Democrats when it came to Supreme Court nominees, blocking Obama’s Merrick Garland nomination in 2016 and skillfully ushering in President Donald Trump’s nominees.

McConnell is not in the business of helping Democrats out of jams. Good for him. McConnell warned Reid not to break the filibuster; Reid is the godfather of the current 6-3 conservative Supreme Court majority.

I’ve asked a number of potential Republican 2024 presidential candidates whether they would follow Trump’s example from 2016 and put out a list of prospective Supreme Court nominees. That move was crucial to Trump’s win that year. Mitch “First You Have to Win” McConnell (there’s another nickname) was instrumental in that matter because, as Senate leader, he had announced there would be no votes and no hearings on any nominees after the untimely death of Justice Antonin Scalia, even before the Garland nomination was announced. Voters thus knew during the 2016 campaign that they were voting for specific potential Supreme Court justices.

It is a treat to have a party leader who actually believes in the party and refuses to help out Biden and Schumer. Politely, of course, as befits a Kentucky gentleman, but also with a certain refreshing clarity.

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