The Raw Desperation of the Republican Party
I doubted that Mitch McConnell could do it, but he did. With only a week remaining before Election Day, McConnell crammed through the confirmation of a sixth conservative justice to the U.S. Supreme Court. The people who tally such things reckon that Amy Coney Barrett is the first justice since 1869 to receive not a single vote from the minority party in the Senate.
It was a move of raw power. But it was also motivated by raw desperation.
Polls suggest Republicans are facing defeat in the 2020 races, and probably by big margins. Joe Biden and Donald Trump are neck and neck in Georgia and Texas, nobody’s previous idea of swing states. Republican senators are at risk not only in Maine and Colorado, but also in Iowa and even Kansas.
Republicans are in danger of losing something more than seats and chambers in 2020. They are in danger of losing an entire system of political control.
[Tom Nichols: This Republican Party is not worth saving]
Measured by elections won and lost, the 2010s were the most conservative decade since the 1920s. At their zenith of power, in 2017–18, Republicans controlled the presidency, the Senate and House, 33 state governorships, and 67 of 99 state assemblies and senates. Not since the administrations of Presidents Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover had the GOP so utterly dominated the machinery of government.
But this time, unlike the days
