Last week’s two significant Supreme Court decisions – loosening some restrictions on American’s gun owners and restricting abortions for the nation’s women – represent the ultimate impact of Donald Trump’s narrow 2016 election victory over Hillary Clinton.
They also represent the success of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell’s cynical manipulation of Senate confirmation procedures. He kept a Democratic president from installing a justice in the last year of his presidency but enabled a Republican to install one as the nation’s voters were poised to oust him from office.
Ironically, neither Trump, known primarily before his election as a bombastic developer and reality television host, nor McConnell, a dour master of the Senate’s inside game, had ever identified strongly with the GOP’s most fervent abortion rights opponents.
