“I think it’s highly unlikely – in fact, no, I don’t think either party, if it were different from the president, would confirm a Supreme Court nominee in the middle of an election,” McConnell told radio host Hugh Hewitt.McConnell was asked if a GOP-controlled Senate would take the same tack in 2024 that it did in 2016, when they refused to give Merrick Garland, former President Obama’s final Supreme Court pick, a hearing or a vote on his nomination to fill the vacancy created by the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.Republicans subsequently confirmed Amy Coney Barrett, then-President Trump’s third Supreme Court nominee, in 2020, locking in a 6-3 conservative majority. The move, which sparked howls from Democrats, set a new record for how closely before a presidential election a Senate has confirmed a Supreme Court nominee.
Moreover:
McConnell declined to say what Republicans would do if a justice stepped down in mid-2023 and Republican controlled the Senate. “We’ll have to wait and see what happens,” McConnell said, asked by Hewitt if the nominee would get a fair shot.
Stated plainly, Mitch McConnell never will allow a Democratic president to successfully nominate a justice to the Supreme Court as long as he has the power to block it. And I guarantee you that whoever succeeds him as Senate Republican leader will not, either. The Republican Party’s war on the American democratic republic is now declared and open. This is saying the loud part out loud.
There are only three options remaining that I can see:
