***To read the full blog, please check out the complete post on NewsBusters***
With the Senate’s Supreme Court confirmation vote for Judge Neil Gorsuch just days away and the possibly of Republicans nuking the filibuster looming, NBC’s Chuck Todd seemed as though he was in a near panic on Sunday’s Meet The Press. Besides his declarations of the GOP continuing the Senate’s decent down the “slippery slope” of removing the filibuster, Todd pestered Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for the Senate to hold a vote for former President Barack Obama’s nominee, Judge Merrick Garland.
“There is clearly a debate and a fight about how Supreme Court justices are confirmed, how it was handled,” he told McConnell, “Do you have any regrets on how you treated Merrick Garland last year?”
“No. The tradition had been not to confirm vacancies created in the middle of a presidential year,” McConnell explained, “You'd have to go back to 80 years to find the last time that happened, go back to the 1880s to find the last time it happened before that.” He also reminded Todd of the obvious fact that if the roles were reversed, Democrats would have wanted to hold off on a Republican president’s nominee.
Todd continued to whine, “I understand that. But why not-- If that was the rationale that was a rationale to vote against his confirmation. Why not put him up for a vote?” McConnell seemed to find humor in Todd’s insistence that Garland should be given a vote, because he couldn’t help but chuckle as he said: “Look, we litigated that last year.”
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