This is an intriguing development. Reportedly popular Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear is contemplating a legal challenge to the law that Mitch McConnell floated through the gerrymandered Kentucky state congress a few years back, stating that if he resigned his seat early due to health concerns, the Governor could not appoint a Democrat. Beshear has other ideas. I rarely cite to the Moony Washington Times but they’re citing to the Lexington Herald-Leader:
Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear finds himself boxed in by the 2021 law requiring the governor to file mid-term vacancies in the U.S. Senate from a list of three candidates chosen by the state party of the previous sitting senator.
Mr. Beshear may thumb his nose at the new law and try to name a Democrat.
“I would imagine you would absolutely see a lawsuit on this,” Michael Abate, a Louisville attorney who’s worked for the Kentucky Democratic Party in the past, told the Lexington (Kentucky) Herald-Leader.
“Beshear either says, ‘Hey, Republican Party, thank you for your list, but I’m appointing whoever I want’ and then that immediately gets challenged in court, or you could see Beshear taking the route of filing a lawsuit,” Mr. Abate said. “I mean, he’s got the guts to defy it.” […]
In Kentucky, Mr. Beshear set the stage to challenge the 2021 law when he declared it unconstitutional and vetoed it. The legislature’s Republican supermajority overrode the veto.
In a veto message, the governor cited the U.S. Constitution’s 17th Amendment passed in 1912, which states that the legislature “may empower the executive” to make temporary appointments to fill a senate vacancy.
“The bill … upends a century of precedent by delegating the power to select the representative of all Kentuckians to an unelected, unaccountable committee of an organization that represents only a fraction of Kentuckians,” Mr. Beshear wrote. “The Seventeenth Amendment does not authorize legislatures to direct how the Governor makes an appointment to fill vacancies, and the legislature may not impose an additional qualification on who the Governor may appoint beyond the qualifications for a United States Senator set forth in the Constitution.”
Mr. McConnell has insisted all these parlor games are for naught, saying, “I’m fine.”
Mitch is far from fine. Mitch has fallen a few times in recent years. He was taken by ambulance from a hotel where he was having dinner on one occasion, he injured his shoulder in a fall at home, and then there was the “absence seizure” as McConnell’s recent staring out into space for 20 seconds before John Barrasso escorted him from the podium, has been characterized.
And McConnell knows it. He didn’t just wake up one morning in 2021 and decide to change Kentucky law. He knows he’s pushing the envelope.
And who will succeed McConnell as Minority Leader, if he does end up leaving early? Or, for that matter, when he chooses to retire? Rick Scott, John Thune, John Barrasso and John Cornyn have all been named. From this list I would say John Thune, the current Senate Republican Whip. Barrasso has been around a while but he’s no great leader. He’s from Wyoming, the least populated state in the Union and people have just gotten used to pushing the button beside his name in that ruby red Republican enclave. Cornyn is in the same category, basically, and Rick Scott is an embarrassment. So Thune is the logical choice.
Lots of changes going on in Washington. McConnell stepping down will be the end of an era.
No need for any of us to be mean and ugly and hope he dies, or at least becomes infirm and just this side of a “vegetable” laying in bed or under a blanket on the couch at home. Yertle simply accepting he’s no longer up to the job of helping to turn us into a fascist country and just pulling back into the safety of his shell, never to emerge again is enough. I love the idea of Beshear flipping a double-bird to Kentucky GOPers and appointing whomever he damn well wants if McConnell can’t finish his term.
It’s my understanding that some states have for a while had laws saying if there’s a vacancy it must be filled by someone of the same political Party as the person who is gone. However I think Kentucky might have gotten a little too cute for its own good with their own version. It’s one thing to have a law saying a Gov. has to pick someone from the same Party. But having a trio (unspecified on who would make up that group even!) come up with a list of candidates from which the Gov. can pick? Like I said, they might have complicated things to the point that the law would be declared unconstitutional. All because Moscow Mitch wanted to call the shots (assuming he’s still breathing) in naming his successor!
I might not wish him to die a horrible death (I don’t) but hell, if he were be hoisted on his own freaking petard I don’t think I’d be able to resist an opportunity to grab onto that sucker and yank it around some just to inflict some suffering.
I think McConnell may have been a bit too big for his britches this time. I don’t wish him any harm, either. None of us have to. it’s pretty obvious that Father Time is having his way with McConnell as he does with us all.
But I would love to see a Democratic senator from Kentucky. Oh, what a hoot that would be!
“I have never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.”
or more accurately…
“All men have an emotion to kill; when they strongly dislike some one they involuntarily wish he was dead. I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.”
Clarence Darrow, (often wrongly attributed to Mark Twain).
So I await McConnell’s obituary with interest.
I wish ill health on no one, even evil bastards like Sen. Terrapin. He needs to go, like yesterday. And Dianne (which way is up?) as well should be wheeled into retirement along with him. This is a creepy convalescence home, while the country is shambling.
Add Grassly to that duo and you have a winning ticket to the retirement home.
I agree. And as much as we all dislike dfg, there’s no need for the people who say they wish he would die to be saying that. No one should wish death on another. I’ve seen it here more than once.
Yertle wants to retire as majority leader. His current term isn’t up until ’26. He’s going to try and hang on until at least the ’24 elections are done. Problem is, as bad as this Senate map looks, the MAGA faithful are incapable of nominating anyone who can win a statewide election. WVA is gone, no matter what Manchild does. But we do have possible pick-ups in FL, TX and MO. We already have good candidates in TX and MO.
I don’t see Yertle leaving the Senate, no matter his health, before the election. The Senate has a long history of senators hanging on and dying in office – Strom Thurmond, Robert Byrd, Ted Kennedy. Should Yertle meet his maker anytime soon, I have no problem believing Andy (he’s my guv, we’re on a first name basis) will appoint his choice and fight it out in court if the rethugs object.
While I despise most of what Mitch has said and done and stood for, I was shocked and saddened to see how bad he looked during his ‘event’. Before he froze up, his face and mouth looked stiff, not moving quite right. He just looked so old and feeble, not quite there. It’s no wonder they’ve kept him under wraps for the last several months. He’s in no shape to remain in the office he holds, certainly not through 2026. I hope Beshear is able to pull off his ‘rebellion’ and appoint a Dem to that office. Mitch needs to go home and enjoy retirement while he still can.
Hard as it is for some people to believe it’s possible he is actually a person of faith, just as my evil, despicable P.O.S. grandfather was. Which means Yertle, like my grandad KNOWS he’s headed to hell and is terrified of an eternity paying the price he so richly deserves to have to pay for his multitude of sins. Kinda hard to enjoy retirement with that weighing on his mind and retiring would give him too much time to contemplate what he believes in his heart is coming. So much better he thinks to keep busy so he doesn’t have time to think about what’s in store for him. Makes me wish that instead of being agnostic that I too believed in heaven, and HELL.
Perhaps like so many pseudo christians, he believes that if he prays and says he’s sorry or goes to confession or whatever his faith decrees, that all is forgiven and despite his horrid life he will still make it through the pearly gates.
Well, Gov Beshear should just go ahead and name a Democrat and DARE the state’s GOP challenge him. After all, he could simply point out how Mitch McConnell himself broke a long-standing precedent by willfully holding up a Supreme Court seat for the better part of 9 months in 2016 in order to “let the people have some say” and then turned right around and, with less than two months before the 2020 election, managed to rush through a nominee, somehow feeling his 2016 decision didn’t apply to 2020.
And, it would be interesting to see how the State’s GOP legislators could even claim to have any standing in a lawsuit since, as the article noted, the US Constitution takes precedence over any mere State Constitution when it comes to the naming of members of the US Congress. (A lot of states have tried to pass term limit laws for their US House and Senate members over the years, but the Supreme Court has overturned every single one of them with the flat declaration that the US Constitution would require an amendment specifically limiting the terms of members of Congress. The members, of course, are free to impose their own limits–promises of “no more than two terms as Senator” or “no more than 10 years in the House” are perfectly fine since there’s nothing in the Constitution that mandates anyone’s running for Congress or remaining there longer than they want to be.)
We would be very fortunate if McConnell were to leave the Senate. He was the one who stacked the SCOTUS with incompetent people who should never have been confirmed.