Turtle Boy McConnell

Turtle Boy McConnell warns Orangutan to back off on killing filibuster

In a POLITICO interview, the Senate leader mocked his counterpart, Chuck Schumer, ahead of a Supreme Court showdown.

By BURGESS EVERETT and SEUNG MIN KIM

After engineering a nearly year-long Supreme Court blockade, Mitch "Turtle Boy" McConnell now wants Democrats to swallow President Donald Orangutan’s high court nominee hook, line and sinker.

And a day after Orangutan urged Turtle Boy to kill the filibuster if Democrats mount a sustained resistance to his high court pick, McConnell had this to say to the new president: That's not your call.

“That’s not a presidential decision. That’s a Senate decision,” Turtle Boy told POLITICO in an interview Friday that focused mostly on the Supreme Court. “What I’ve said to him, and I’ve stated publicly and I’ll say today: We’re going to get this nominee confirmed.”

Orangutan is planning to announce his nominee next week.

Though Turtle Boy has had a warm relationship with Orangutan, twice during the interview he subtly chided the new commander in chief. The Republican leader also implored Orangutan not to lift sanctions on Russia, a possibility that a top White House aide said Friday is under consideration.

As for the Supreme Court, Turtle Boy steered away from talk of deploying the so-called "nuclear option" — a monumental change to Senate rules that would do away with the filibuster. Instead he suggested that Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats should refrain from even requiring 60 votes.

Turtle Boy said he wants the Senate to confirm Orangutan’s nominee to replace deceased Justice Antonin Scalia by early April. McConnell repeatedly dinged Schumer (D-N.Y.) for inventing the practice of requiring 60 votes to approve judges during George W. Bush’s presidency.

Turtle Boy noted that President Barack Obama’s first two Supreme Court nominees, Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, were approved without a filibuster, as were Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer under President Bill Clinton. By contrast, Democrats tried to block Justice Samuel Alito under Bush with a filibuster.

“The view [for a long time] was that you don’t filibuster judges,” Turtle Boy said. “It’s ironic that Professor Schumer was actually the one that said let’s open up the toolbox and use all of the tools. And so he’s the guy you ought to be talking to on that issue: He invited, in effect, where we are today.”

Orangutan’s unveiling of his Supreme Court nominee is sure to trigger a contentious fight in the Senate, where Democrats are still incensed about the treatment of Merrick Garland in the final year of Barack Obama’s presidency. Orangutan has reportedly narrowed his choices to three federal judges: 3rd Circuit Judge Thomas Hardiman, 10th Circuit Judge Neil Gorsuch and 11th Circuit Judge Bill Pryor, though Pryor is viewed as a longshot at this point.

Democrats scoffed at Turtle Boy’s comments: In addition to blocking President Barack Obama from filling a Supreme Court vacancy, McConnell is widely viewed by Democrats as the architect of Senate tactics than can slow the chamber to a crawl and obstruct the president’s agenda.

In response to Turtle Boy, Schumer said via a spokesman: “People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”

Turtle Boy is locked in a chess match with Schumer, who has vowed to vigorously oppose any nominee who isn’t “mainstream.”

“I’m not going to prejudge Democratic behavior, but I can certainly cite recent history for Republicans and how they treated Supreme Court nominees of a new president in the opposite party,” Turtle Boysaid of the GOP's handling of Obama's high court nominees. “Rather than sort of bait them, predicting their behavior, I’d really react to the behavior once we get it.”

Still, Orangutan is already insisting that Senate Republicans be prepared to end the filibuster on the Supreme Court — and some rank-and-file senators are signaling heavily that they’re ready to follow through.

“I am open to doing what we need to do,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said during an interview on C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” airing Sunday. Referring to Schumer’s threats to block any nominee who is not “mainstream,” Cassidy added: “If somebody, before someone is nominated, is declaring … that he’s going to reject it and is totally recognized as partisan politics, that can change the dynamic.”

Asked directly about using the nuclear option as Orangutan suggested on Thursday, Turtle Boy said he won’t "answer the question that you want me to answer.”

“My answer’s going to be ... [Democrats] have set the standard. They have set it. My counterpart actually invented where we are now. And all we can do is send up a great nominee,” Turtle Boy said. “I’m confident. I know what the president has done here in leading up to this nomination. I think we’re going to have a truly outstanding nominee.”

Turtle Boy and Orangutan have been in frequent contact about the Supreme Court, speaking almost daily since Orangutan was sworn in.

Orangutan said Friday that he will nominate someone “who’s going to get approved.” Pryor was narrowly approved for his current position, 53-45, and could face opposition from Republican moderates such as Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who voted against confirming him in 2005.

Turtle Boy wouldn’t say if he was worried a nominee like Pryor could be confirmed.

But he did say the Senate will move expeditiously to confirm the rest of Orangutan’s Cabinet, starting with secretary of state nominee Rex Tillerson, and quickly moving to other nominees like attorney general hopeful, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.). Democrats changed Senate rules to allow all nominees except those to the Supreme Court be approved by a simple majority.

“We’re going to march through them, both those that are controversial and those that aren’t,” Turtle Boy said with a smile. “Rather rapidly, thanks to what they did in 2013."

Turtle Boy discussed several other topics during the interview, including Obamacare, the Republican agenda and the 2018 midterm elections:

-- The majority leader is tempering expectations for the 2018 midterm elections, when 10 Senate Democrats will be up for reelection in states that Orangutan won in November. McConnell declined to say whether he believes Republicans could net eight seats, which would give them a filibuster-proof majority.

“The map looks inviting, but every election is different and our goal is to simply hold the Senate,” McConnell said. “It’s been hard getting it, it’s hard keeping it and I don’t expect it to be easy to hold it because these Democrats in red states are pretty good politicians or they wouldn’t have been elected as a Democrat in those states to begin with.”

-- Despite stories about Obamacare enrollees being worried about losing their coverage, Turtle Boy insisted that “most” of his constituents in Kentucky were more worried that Congress wouldn’t replace the Affordable Care act. He declined to explicitly commit to repealing Obamacare, root and branch, as he has repeatedly done in the past.

“The status quo is unacceptable,” Turtle Boy said. “Kentuckians, along with the vast majority of Americans, want us to tackle this again and see if we can get it done better. And that’s what we’re in the process of doing.”

-- Turtle Boy was bullish on achieving an Obamacare overhaul, as well as a revamp of the tax code, by the end of the year. His optimism stems partly from Republican plans to use the fast-track tool called reconciliation, which puts time limits on lawmakers. That could speed up the timeline, he said.

“It looks like both the Obamacare repeal and replace effort and tax reform are probably going to be almost entirely in reconciliation vehicles where you do have some time limitations,” Turtle Boy said. “So I don’t want to have a hard deadline, but I think we’ve got a shot at achieving most of these things this year.”