Mitch McConnell wants you to know: The Court That McConnell Built — the Senate minority leader is, more than anyone else, responsible for its current configuration — is an unremarkable, by-the-books institution. In McConnell’s telling, the court is an “ideologically unpredictable body” that “produces diverse outcomes” — and, he says, the numbers back him up.
You’ve heard about damned lies and statistics? The maxim applies to the Supreme Court, too. The Kentucky Republican is using numbers to try to sand the edges off a hard-right court, and the most intriguing thing about his argument, made in a recent Post op-ed, is that he felt compelled to make it at all.
Building a conservative-dominated federal judiciary has been McConnell’s passion project, but his greatest passion is achieving — or, in this circumstance, regaining — power. With control of the Senate up for grabs next year, McConnell must be worrying about whether the court’s actions, in particular its overruling of Roe v. Wade, are taking a toll on his chances of retaking the chamber and again becoming majority leader.
Because that is the best explanation for why McConnell is choosing to minimize the enormity of his accomplishment — his transformation of the Supreme Court from a wobbly center-right institution into a far more conservative, at times aggressively radical, body.
Under McConnell’s no-holds barred stewardship, Justice Antonin Scalia was replaced — not by President Barack Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, but by President Donald Trump’s, Neil M. Gorsuch. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy retired to make way for Brett M. Kavanaugh. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died just before the 2020 election, and McConnell muscled through her replacement, Amy Coney Barrett.