Right from the start, I could not understand politically why it made sense to ram Amy Coney Barrett nomination through the Senate at record speed. The Republican narrative that it would shore up their base made no sense. It had the exact opposite result and got the Democratic base really ticked off to boot.
From a purely political perspective, you want to promise that you will do something if you are elected when running for office. That is the quid pro quo of politics. In this case, you elect Donald Trump and give Republicans the Senate, and they give you a 6-3 conservative majority in the United States Supreme Court. Mitch McConnell could have begun real confirmation hearings and held the vote after the election. This would've given the Republican party base something to vote for. Instead, they push the confirmation through at record speed on a purely partisan vote one week before their base is due to go to the polls because thanks to Donald Trump's rhetoric, they no longer believe in absentee voting.
So if I am a Republican, what exactly am I voting for? You've given me everything I wanted. You have filled the entire federal judiciary with hundreds of conservative judges and swung the United States Supreme Court to a staunchly conservative bend for the foreseeable future. Perfect. I can stay home now, just in case this Covid hoax I hear so much about might be real.
But it's even worse than that for Republicans because not only did they take away one of the few things Republicans would vote for, in the process, they manage to absolutely enraged Democrats who saw the memory of their hero of Ruth Bader Ginsburg denigrated by the rank hypocrisy of Republicans at the exact moment that they were deciding whether or not to mail in their absentee ballot or go vote early in person.
There really is only one explanation for this because politically, it makes no sense unless Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and other Republicans have internal polling the tell them that they are about to get completely wiped out on election day. It would be tough to make the case that they have a "mandate" to push forward a conservative justice if they just got their asses handed to them by the American populace. This is what the speed was all about. Trying to get there way before the voters have a say and completely let the air out of their manufactured "mandate” narrative. (I am setting aside the audacity of claiming a mandate when they lost the popular vote by 3 million votes for now)
So what exactly did they get for this? They got a conservative court, but they probably lost one of the few reasons the Republicans would bother to vote for them in the first place. They energized their opposition to not just go to the polls and win the White House, but expand their ranks in the house and, in all likelihood, take over the Senate. At that point, you can bet your last dollar the Democrats will be howling at their leaders to get rid of the filibuster, enter Washington DC and Puerto Rico as a state giving Democrats four more senators, and expanding the United States Supreme Court to represent better the true will of the people instead of being governed by a party that has won only one national election in the last 30 years.
Senate minority leader truck Schumer warned Republicans on the Senate floor that Republicans now have no right to tell Democrats how to run a majority the next time the GOP is in the minority.
You better believe the rank-and-file are going to hold him to it. The GOP has seriously miscalculated this time. It's going to cost them dearly.