Courier Journal Editorial Board

As President Donald Trump basked in the glow this week of being feted by Queen Elizabeth II and the royal family during his state visit to England, Sen. Mitch McConnell was anchored in Washington, demonstrating once again why he is the one actually running the United States of America.

While Trump engaged once again in his sideshow antics — picking Twitter fights with London's mayor ("very dumb and incompetent") and threatening to slap tariffs on Mexico if it doesn't immediately stop migrants from coming into the U.S. — the Senate leader from Louisville was slamming the brakes on the president's agenda.

McConnell made it emphatically clear he and Republican senators won't support Trump's tariff plan, even as he cagily shifted blame for the migrant problem away from the president and back to Democrats.

"There is not much support in my conference for tariffs, that's for sure," McConnell told reporters after two White House lawyers lobbied for the “emergency” tariffs at a private Senate meeting. “We’re hoping (that) doesn’t happen.”

Make no mistake: That was an exasperated McConnell throwing a high-and-tight political fastball at the president, trying desperately to brush him away from the haphazard idea of slapping progressive tariffs on Mexico in hopes of thwarting undocumented immigration problems.

The simple truth is that while Trump may furiously type out Twitter threats and issue sweeping ultimatums and edicts (it's Infrastructure Week yet again!), nothing gets done in Washington that doesn't have McConnell's stamp of approval.

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And that's a problem.

Yes, it's good to have an adult in the room who will check Trump's destructive impulses. Yes, McConnell is an experienced hand who understands the importance of America's international alliances.

And yes, McConnell knows how to bend the arcane machinery of Washington to his will better than anyone.

But McConnell's iron grip on power has only grown since he became Senate majority leader in 2015. And his "ends justify the means" approach to wielding that power is unraveling the constitutional underpinnings that make our government work in the way the founders intended.

The Courier Journal has editorialized before about how McConnell in 2016 essentially thumbed his nose at the U.S. Constitution by refusing to even consider Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama's Supreme Court pick to fill Justice Antonin Scalia's seat.

McConnell stretched the Constitution's "advice and consent" provision beyond recognition by arguing that the "vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president," despite Obama still having a year left in his presidency.

"(The president) shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the Supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law."

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Nowhere does the Constitution say that the president loses the power to nominate a Supreme Court justice after the third year of his term.

Nowhere does it give the Senate majority leader the authority to hijack the nomination process.

Yet, McConnell did just that.

Citing imaginary "precedent" that the Senate has never confirmed a Supreme Court justice in a president's fourth year (it has), and the laughable excuse of the "Biden Rule" that was never a rule, let alone put into practice, he subverted the Constitution.

And he has trumpeted it ever since, calling it the "most consequential decision I’ve made in my entire public career."

But here’s where that “Who Really Runs Washington” mantra is burnished even more. McConnell also made it clear that if Trump got the chance to nominate a Supreme Court justice in 2020, McConnell would be sure to ram it through: "Oh, we’d fill it," he told a crowd in Paducah, Kentucky, last week.

The fact is that after years of obstructing Obama's judicial nominees at every turn, McConnell has gleefully abandoned the same rules he used to thwart Obama's judges to confirm unprecedented numbers of Trump federal judges.

"That’s the most important thing we’ve done for the country, which cannot be undone," he told the same Paducah audience.

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McConnell proudly calls it his most important legacy. But it is a legacy tarnished by his naked cynicism that justifies doing whatever it takes to hold on to power for his party.

We have no confidence that McConnell would ever confirm a Democratic president's Supreme Court nominee — no matter how many years remained in that president's term.

Why would he? He suffered no consequences for his Garland gambit. In fact, Republicans picked up two Senate seats in November’s election.

McConnell contends that Democrats are no different, "I knew … the guys on the other side would have done the same thing" in 2016.

But that's the problem. When you've convinced yourself the other side will stoop to any lengths to get what it wants, you allow yourself to discard the principles that make America great. (And we mean truly great, not some contrived message slathered across a red cap.)

Certainly, McConnell has shown that to be true. The only way that he will learn that actions have consequences is if voters teach it to him at the ballot box.

And that means Kentucky's Democratic Party must get serious about producing a viable candidate to challenge him. It has failed time and again to date, unable to capitalize on polling that ranks McConnell's approval rating consistently among the lowest in the Senate.

Amy McGrath, a retired Marine fighter pilot, might be that candidate. She has the integrity that McConnell lacks, and she launched a fierce campaign that fell just short of taking down incumbent U.S. Rep. Andy Barr last November. Perhaps other viable contenders will surface, too.

There must be a check on McConnell's unparalleled grab for power.

Kentucky, and America, deserve better.

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