.@JeffFlake: I Wouldn't Be Blocking Trump's Judges If I Weren't Leaving townhall.com/tipsheet/guybe…
“It is not productive,” said Sen. Ted Cruz, who has also been known to cause major headaches for McConnell. “One of the greatest substantive victories that we have delivered for the American people the last 2 years is nominating and confirming strong constitutionalist judges.”
”For a Republican senator to be blocking that is frustrating the promises we made to the voters...”. Sen. Thom Tillis acknowledged that “you can’t not be frustrated when you see nominees that were voted out of committee with Flake’s support now being held up.”
”On, incidentally, a policy matter I support...I just don’t see any path to success, and in the meantime we’re holding up a number of qualified judges that Sen. Flake voted out of committee,” Tillis added.
Across the aisle, defeated Sen. Claire McCaskill, who faced some eyebrow-raising opposition from elements of her own party over the course of her re-election push, is also sounding fairly displeased about the state of Democratic politics these days:
McCaskill characterized her loss as a “failure” of the Democratic Party “to gain enough trust with rural Americans,” and she predicted her party will struggle to win other seats as long as President Trump remains in office.
“This demand for purity, this looking down your nose at people who want to compromise, is a recipe for disaster for the Democrats,” she said Thursday in her Capitol Hill office.
“Will we ever get to a majority in the Senate again, much less to 60, if we do not have some moderates in our party?”
Did McCaskill actually lose because of her moderation, though? There's a much stronger case that she lost because of her liberalism, which was wildly out-of-step with Missouri voters.
She voted against both of President Trump's SCOTUS nominees, got tons of cash from the abortion lobby and other left-wing interest groups, and outspent her Republican challenger by an overwhelming margin. And lost. In a blue year.
