McConnell doesn’t care about the truth
LTE in the Hartford Courant — 10/4/20
It’s no surprise that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would announce his plan to quickly fill the new vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court, within hours of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death. But it means his stated reason for denying consideration of Merrick Garland in 2016, nominated by then-President Barack Obama, was a lie (i.e., that voters need a say in an election year).
Even more concerning is how little McConnell seems to care about lying.
Yes, he has the chance to advance the conservative cause for decades to come.
But this country has always had competing interests and opposing sides. What held our imperfect union together, allowing us to move forward when we did, was a shared sense of common decency. That defined Americans, and holding that value above all is actually what made this country great.
When you agree on boundaries of behavior, both sides win some and lose some, and we accept that in the name of democracy, respect and shared governance.
We learn in kindergarten that for the game to work, we all must play by the same rules. If McConnell breaks his own rule, he risks furthering the angry divide that already exists and which makes our government distrusted and dysfunctional.
So we must ask McConnell the same question that attorney Joseph Welch asked Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1954, and which stopped McCarthy from destroying more lives for his own political gain:
“Have you no decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
Rena Epstein, West Hartford