The White House had planned to nominate Chad Meredith to the federal bench in Kentucky, last week.
Meredith is a conservative lawyer from Kentucky had his nomination stopped by the White House after Senator Rand Paul indicated that he would not return a blue slip, or the process for senators to back judges from their home state.
McConnell is now blaming Paul, and Paul is blaming McConnell.
Specifically, Paul is claiming that McConnell made a secret deal with the White House and he was not appraised of it, The New York Post reports.
Paul took to Twitter to levy blame on the Senate Minority Leader, saying he supported Meredith but couldn’t let the nomination move forward because of McConnell’s lack of communication.
The junior senator from Kentucky did not stop there, he then spoke to reporters where he again blamed McConnell stating, “McConnell’s to blame for tanking this because he tried to do it secretly [and] Democrats caught wind up in the state… We never heard about it from McConnell’s office,… And his people simply said, ‘You can’t do this but we can.’ You know, ‘We’re so powerful, we can do whatever we want.’”
The White House has also released a statement, “In considering potential District Court nominees, the White House learned that Senator Rand Paul will not return a blue slip on Chad Meredith… Therefore, the White House will not nominate Mr. Meredith.”
McConnell is blaming Paul, of course saying that Paul’s opposition to the nomination is “just utterly pointless.”
McConnell said that his goal was to get a judge suffiencent to him from a “liberal Democratic president,” and that Rand Paul has”prevented’ that.
McConnell even took a shot at Paul, saying that Paul may have thought it was his turn to nominate someone to the bench but, “The president would not have been taking a recommendation from Rand Paul, I can assure you.”
A source has told Politico that, “The conservative base does not care about an inside-the-Beltway process argument. They would like a Federalist Society rock star in a lifetime judicial seat.”
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