Thread by @IsaacDovere

The question of whether President Trump will get to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court before the election essentially comes down to four GOP votes in the Senate, deciding whether they want to give that to him, and to break the principle McConnell invented in 2016.

Among the senators who will be under intense pressure on this question will be Susan Collins, up for election herself and has struggled with how much to attach herself to Trump, and who said after impeachment she thought Trump had learned his lesson about changing behavior.

Murkowski has said she is against an appointment before the inauguration. But that was theoretical. Now it’s real. She’s not up for election this year. Neither is Romney.

Another remote possibility: an election that gets kicked to the Supreme Court somehow. There would be only eight justices, no tiebreaker if needed - though this leaves a 5-3 conservative majority. Could potentially put Roberts, the institutionalist, under intense pressure.

There is no way Cory Gardner, Martha McSally, Susan Collins or anyone running a re-election races puts any distance between themselves and Trump, as they may be pressured to, and vote for Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court nominee.

But it’s not just senators with races this year. There are more GOP senators than say so publicly who have major problems with Trump and worry about what he means for the future of the party and the country.

So: do they back him here when he needs it and could help his victory?

If there are Judiciary Committee hearings on a nominee (if McConnell doesn’t take Trump’s inevitable nominee right to the floor), it will also give a major platform for committee member Kamala Harris right at the height of the campaign.

This Schumer tweet is a McConnell quote from March 2016.

McConnell, though, had already made clear he wouldn’t hold to this argument in the event of another vacancy

Merrick Garland was nominated to the Supreme Court 237 days before the 2016 election. He couldn’t get a hearing, or even a meeting with Republican senators.

The 2020 election is in 46 days. Voting has already begun (started today in several states).

Lisa Murkowski said again today she wouldn’t support a nominee before the election. If that holds, it’s up to just 3 other Rs to decide whether to support Trump &his pick, or decide that opposing him is more important than shifting the balance of the court

Chuck Grassley, the GOP president pro tem of the Senate, said as recently as August he would hold to not supporting a new nominee before the election. That puts him in opposition to fellow Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, who is in a tight race and said she would globegazette.com/grassley-ernst…

Mitch McConnell, rationalizing the layers from his invented principle in 2016, as he says it doesn’t apply this time:

Ginsburg’s final statement, not so subtly opposed to Trump, seems likely to goad him: "My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new President is installed.”

Trump has released a long, somewhat fan fiction list of Supreme Court nominee possibilities. Biden has pledged to appoint a Black woman to the Supreme Court.

As shown here, the original McConnell statement on replacing Scalia did not include all the layers of rationalization he subsequently added:

.@SenatorReid statement on Ginsburg;

"Each GOP Senator must now demonstrate whether previous protests about filling SupCt seats during an election year were sincere beliefs or a shameless example of the cynical hyper-partisan grandstanding and obstruction that Americans detest"

Obama was adamantly against how Republican acted on Merrick Garland, arguing that it would break the process. Now, he says, the process is broken, so that's the world:

"As votes are already being cast in this election, Republican Senators are now called to apply that standard."