Remember when — Cruz, Graham debate Lynch nomination

• Lindsey Graham never met a GOP position that was ‘winnable’
• More revealing, more precipitous than thought by too many 
• HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY! Next year it may be to celebrate the Last Rites for the United States Constitution

Flashback:
Senators Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham debating the nomination of Loretta Lynch to the Post of Attorney General before the Senate Judiciary Committee (Roll Call Feb., 2015):

Ted Cruz, urging his fellow Republicans on the Committee to vote against Lynch:

“If Republicans mean what we say when we oppose the president’s unconstitutional executive amnesty, then we should use every constitutional check and balance we have,” Cruz said. “One of the most potent checks and balances the Constitution gives the Senate is the power of confirmation.”

“If every Republican on the Judiciary Committee votes ‘no,’ Ms. Lynch’s confirmation will be defeated,” he said. “Likewise, if Republican leadership chooses not to report the nomination to the floor, Ms. Lynch’s nomination will be defeated.”

Lindsey Graham, urging Republicans on the Judiciary Committee to vote “yes” for Loretta Lynch’s confirmation:

“Nobody is going to say that the executive order is illegal that President Obama appoints, so the idea that we would block an attorney general nominee until you’ve gotten somebody to agree with Sen. Cruz about the executive order is probably not feasible,” he said. “It ensures that Eric Holder stays in place for two years. It’s picking a fight that we can’t win.”

“I don’t find Loretta Lynch an unqualified person,” he said.”The GOP should “pick fights that are good for the country, that are winnable.”

Her endorsement of the president’s executive actions on immigration were the main sticking point.

McCONNELL, ESPECIALLY, IS WHO TO THANK FOR THE SUCCESSFUL NOMINATION OF LORETTA LYNCH AS ATTORNEY GENERAL,

From an outstanding analysis by Andrew McCarthy, writing in the National Review, Apr.25,2015:  (excerpt)

In October, while courting conservative support for the upcoming midterm election, Senator Mitch McConnell declaimed that any nominee to replace Eric Holder as “the nation’s highest law-enforcement official” must, “as a condition of his or her confirmation,” avoid “at all costs” Holder’s penchant for putting “political and ideological commitments ahead of the rule of law” — including as it “relates to the president’s acting unilaterally on immigration or anything else.”

Turns out he was kidding.

Once the November election was safely won (including his own — McConnell won’t face the voters again for six years), the majority leader swung into action, laboring behind the scenes to drum up support for Lynch. He not only whipped for Lynch from the shadows; by voting for her confirmation, he mocked any conservatives who’d been naïve enough to take his campaign rhetoric seriously.

In this he joined nine others on the roster of Republican senators who took an oath to uphold the Constitution then supported an attorney general who had vowed to undermine the Constitution: Orrin Hatch (Utah), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Jeff Flake (Ariz.), Susan Collins (Maine), Rob Portman (Ohio), Mark Kirk (Ill.), Thad Cochran (Miss.), Kelly Ayotte (N.H.), and Ron Johnson (Wis.).

That doesn’t begin to quantify the perfidy, though. In order to get Lynch to the finish line, McConnell first had to break conservative opposition to allowing a final vote for her nomination. The majority leader thus twisted enough arms that 20 Republicans voted to end debate. This guaranteed that Lynch would not only get a final vote but would, in the end, prevail — Senators Hatch, Graham, Flake, Collins, and Kirk having already announced their intention to join all 46 Democrats in getting Lynch to the magic confirmation number of 51.

So, in addition to the aforementioned ten Republicans who said “aye” on the final vote to make Lynch attorney general, there are ten others who conspired in the GOP’s now routine parliamentary deception: Vote in favor of ending debate, knowing that this will give Democrats ultimate victory, but cast a meaningless vote against the Democrats in the final tally in order to pose as staunch Obama opponents when schmoozing the saps back home. These ten — John Thune (S.D.), John Cornyn (Texas), Bob Corker (Tenn.), Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), Pat Roberts (Kan.), Richard Burr (N.C.), Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), Cory Gardner (Col.), Mike Rounds (S.D.), and Thom Tillis (N.C.) — are just as willfully complicit in Lynch’s confirmation and her imminent execution of Obama’s lawlessness.

This linked commentary,  at a website called the “Daily Haymaker” is the most prophetic regarding the attorney generalship of  Loretta Lynch. The piece is superb. By Brant Clifton on December 27, 2014
Loretta Lynch: The NEXT GOP surrender?

DLH

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