By Mike Stunson

Lexington Herald-Leader

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would allow a vote to fill a Supreme Court vacancy if a justice dies in 2020, he told the Paducah (Kentucky) Chamber of Commerce.

Three years ago, McConnell blocked a vote on President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nomination, arguing that the winner of the upcoming presidential election should make the appointment.

On Tuesday, McConnell was asked in front of the Paducah Chamber what he would do if a Supreme Court justice died in 2020. His answer, according to WPSD, is a reversal from his stance in 2016: “Oh, we’d fill it.”

He said judicial confirmations are permanent, unlike the 2017 GOP tax cuts.

“What can’t be undone is a lifetime appointment to a young man or woman who believes in the quaint notion that the job of a judge is to follow the law,” McConnell said, according to WPSD’s live stream. “That’s the most important thing we’ve done for the country, which cannot be undone.”

He refused to consider Obama’s nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, in 2016. Donald Trump later nominated Neil Gorsuch to fill the court vacancy, and he was approved.

The majority leader called his decision to block Garland’s nomination “the biggest decision I’ve made in my time in the Senate with the longest impact on the country,” according to a WPSD recording of McConnell’s comments Tuesday.