The Senate minority leader recently wrote an op-ed column for The Washington Post in which he argues, tediously and not at all persuasively, that the U.S. Supreme Court is friend to neither Republicans nor Democrats. The court is, the Kentucky Republican contends, a completely independent arbiter of justice.

One can understand why McConnell would feel a tad sensitive about how the nation’s high bench is perceived.

In its current form and makeup, this Supreme Court is a creature of McConnell’s making. He packed it and stacked it, rewriting rules, inventing new procedures and trampling over decades- and centuries-old precedents in the process.

Until recently, the GOP leader took bows for his work in remodeling the court, styling himself as a Machiavellian master of political intrigue who delivered what had been the number one item on the right-wing wish list for decades.

Then something funny happened.

Once the court started delivering the other items on the conservative shopping list—an end to reproductive rights, the dismantling of affirmative action, etc.—its public approval numbers began dropping like a boulder in freefall.

Once the most revered of the three branches of the federal government, the court has seen much of its support vanish. A Marquette Law School poll released in May found that only 41% of the public approved of the court’s performance while 59% disapproved. Other less reliable surveys found that only 30% of Americans liked what the justices were doing.

Worse, from McConnell’s perspective, is that the citizenry’s displeasure hasn’t been confined to the courts.

The 2022 congressional elections were supposed to be a red tidal wave in which Republicans rolled back into power in both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives.

Instead, 2022 turned into a purple trickle. Democrats not only held onto the Senate but picked up a seat. Republicans took control of the House, but by a much, much narrower margin than expected.

Part of the problem was that many voters were outraged by the court’s decision to overturn—after a half-century—Roe v. Wade and thus restrict rather than expand personal liberty for the first time in the bench’s history. Much of the ire generated by the Dobbs decision burned the hottest in America’s suburbs, once one of the GOP’s strongholds.

Many suburban women who had leaned Republican, it turned out, didn’t much care for being told that they couldn’t be trusted to make decisions about their own bodies and lives.

But that wasn’t the only problem.

It also turned out that the public didn’t appreciate the way the court went about dismantling what had been considered settled law—a way that leaned heavily on the McConnell playbook.

To secure their spots on the bench, Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett had to blandly offer mistruths that they considered Roe v. Wade untouchable law.

Then, once installed on the court, they went about the business of demolishing that untouchable law with all the finesse of an untethered wrecking ball. They ignored precedents that had endured for generations and reached back to the 17^th century—long before the United States existed—to find the justification for a ruling that was long on religious faith and short on legal reasoning.

Perhaps McConnell and the justices expected to be applauded for their work. After all, much of their contact with members of the American public is confined to those who inhabit the rightist fringes of the national tapestry.

But the country’s appetite for the establishment of a theocracy and a rollback to the days when women, Black people and LGBTQ Americans were second- or even third-class citizens doesn’t extend far beyond those fringes.

That’s why McConnell felt compelled to try to sanitize the court’s reputation while distancing himself and his party from its actions at the same time.

The task McConnell set for himself required the skill of an acrobat. His op-ed piece, though, was executed with the grace of a water buffalo, arguing that relatively minor decisions that please Democrats carry the same weight as overturning Roe.

In short, comparing cap guns to atom bombs.

As to McConnell’s efforts to separate himself and his party from the court’s record of destruction, good luck with that.

His backers bought this court.

He built it.

Together, they own it.