Friday, February 26, 2016

Mitch McConnell and the Stifling of American Voices

http://quietmike.org/2016/02/20/mitch-mcconnell-stifling-american-voices/
"Republicans have not only used direct, transparent efforts to disenfranchise American voters. Their attempt to delegitimize the presidency of Barack Obama by delegitimizing him as a person was nothing more and nothing less than an attempt to delegitimize the votes of millions of Americans who voted for the first person of color to occupy the Oval Office. And seven years of obstructionism by congressional Republicans was nothing more and nothing less than the same: The message of Republicans to the country was, “If you don’t elect a Republican president, we’ll make sure that nothing gets done.” In other words, if you vote for a Democratic president, we’ll make sure your vote becomes essentially meaningless. And, in the process of making my vote essentially meaningless, Republicans stagnated any progress the country needed to make and could have made during the presidency of a man who was re-elected to a second term by over 5,000,000 voters whose votes were made essentially meaningless as well. Ironically, Mitch McConnell, who, of course, blamed the president for obstructing the work of Congress and then gleefully claimed for himself the title of “Obstructionist-in-Chief” when he ran for re-election in 2014, is suddenly, upon the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, interested in the “voice” of the people – something in which he has previously had little or no interest. Before the body of Justice Scalia was cold, Mr. McConnell had issued a statement/threat asking President Obama to refrain from fulfilling his constitutional duty to send to the Senate a nominee who, upon confirmation, would fill the now-empty seat on the SCOTUS bench. His argument was, if not incoherent, certainly nonsensical relative to the Constitution: “This vacancy should not be filled until we ha a new president"."