How Mitch McConnell’s blatant hypocrisy tarnished Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination for this Ohio voter

On Thursday, April 7, the U.S. Senate confirmed Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, 53-47, for the Supreme Court, with all 50 of the Senate Democrats voting for her and three Republican senators joining them: Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, however, voted against Jackson, and Parma, Ohio resident Dave Wells calls the Kentucky senator out in a letter published by Cleveland.com on April 11.

Wells’ letter was in response to a letter by Solon, Ohio resident George W. Dent, Jr. that Cleveland.com had published a day earlier. Dent pointed out that while Jackson received three Republican votes, no Senate Democrats voted for now-Justice Amy Coney Barrett after then-President Donald Trump nominated her for the High Court in 2021.

Wells argues, “Perhaps the reason there were no Democratic votes for Judge Barrett was the way that then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell handled her confirmation, shoving it down the throats of the Democratic senators.”

Wells notes McConnell’s hypocrisy, explaining, “During the final year of Barack Obama’s presidency, McConnell said that he would not let a lame-duck president choose a Supreme Court judge, with Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland six months before the election, because ‘the American people should have a say.’ Then, in rushing Barrett’s nomination through the Senate, McConnell turned around and changed his self-imposed rule, even though there was less than three months left in Donald Trump’s first term and early voting in the presidential election had already begun.”

Wells adds, “If I were a Democratic senator, I would not have voted for her, either, even if she had written the Constitution herself, because of the taint of her nomination process.”

Parma and Solon are both in Cuyahoga County, Ohio and are suburbs of Cleveland.