Sen. Martha McSally continues her death spiral with call for a quick Supreme Court vote

Opinion: Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg gave Sen. Martha McSally the perfect opportunity to show swing voters she isn't just President Donald Trump's pocket pal.

Laurie Roberts
Arizona Republic
President Donald Trump kisses Senator Martha McSally, R-Ariz., during a rally  at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix on Feb. 19, 2020.

Sen. Martha McSally continued her political death spiral on Friday, becoming one of the first Republican senators in the nation to call for quickly filling the Supreme Court vacancy and to heck with what voters may (or may not) want.

Here was McSally’s final chance to show swing voters that she can stand apart from President Donald Trump.

Here was her chance to put principle above party.

Instead, she hurdled forth on Friday, leaving those principles in her wake as she called for the Senate to go supersonic and fill the vacancy created when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died just hours earlier.

Not in an election year, GOP said then

That is a far cry from where Republicans stood in 2016.

When Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell flatly declared that an election year was no time to fill a spot on the Supreme Court.

"The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice,” McConnell said. “Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.”

That was then, nine months before a presidential election.

Now, suddenly, with just six weeks to until a presidential election, the American people can pound sand.

“In the last midterm election before Justice Scalia’s death in 2016, Americans elected a Republican majority because we pledged to check and balance the last days of a lame duck president’s second term,” McConnell said, in a statement issued Friday. “We kept our promise. Since the 1880s, no Senate has confirmed an opposite party president’s Supreme Court nominee in a presidential election year.

“By contrast, Americans reelected our Senate majority in 2016 and expanded it in 2018 because we pledged to work with President Trump to work with President Trump and support his agenda, particularly his outstanding appointments to the federal judiciary. Once again, we will keep our promise.”

I hope he's seeing a chiropractor after that contortion.

Is McSally convinced she'll lose?

Meanwhile, McConnell's message is clear: Americans might not re-elect either our president or our Senate majority and thus we’ve got to outflank them now, while there is still time.

And McSally was among the first senators to endorse rushing ahead to make this lifetime appointment before voters get their say.

Hypocrisy aside, two things seem clear.

1. Either she thinks this will help her pull out a win.

Or 2. She’s certain that she — and the president — cannot win. Thus, the need for speed.

McSally’s strategy always has been puzzling.

The congresswoman who represented Arizona’s most competitive district lurched to the right to run for the Senate in 2018. It cost her the election, as moderate Republicans and GOP-leaning independents sent a Democrat to the Senate for the first time in three decades.

So naturally, after being appointed to the fill the vacancy created by Sen. John McCain’s death, McSally decided to continue her losing strategy by cuddling up to a president who is unpopular with the voters who will decide her fate.

As a result, she has trailed Democrat Mark Kelly in every poll taken over the last year.

Others said to wait. Not McSally

After three years of campaigning, McSally has not yet made the sale with Arizona’s moderate and independent voters — the ones who will decide this race and perhaps, decide who controls the Senate as well.

Now, suddenly, she is presented with a chance to defy gravity, to put a sliver of daylight between herself and Trump and show those all-important swing voters that she is not just a Donald Trump pocket pal.

She has the chance to demonstrate that she represents not just her conservative base but that she represents all Arizona voters, who in just 18 days will begin casting their ballots.

The ones who should have a say in this lifetime appointment that will affect their lives.

Other senators have stood for their constituents.

“I would not vote to confirm a Supreme Court nominee,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said on Saturday. “We are 50 some days away from an election.”

Of course, that's easy for her to say. She's not up for re-election. But Sen. Susan Collins of Maine is and like McSally, she's trailing in the polls.

“Given the proximity of the presidential election … I do not believe the Senate should vote on the nominee prior to the election,” Collins said on Saturday. “In fairness to the American people, who will either be re-electing the president or selecting a new one, the decision on a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court should be made by the president who is elected on Nov. 3.”

McSally, meanwhile, was the first Senate Republican on Friday to pick up McConnell’s call for an immediate vote on an appointment that will stand for decades to come -- democracy be dammed.

But then, as she often tells us, she’s a fighter pilot.

One who seems determined to crash and burn. Again, that is.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com.