I wish people would stop talking about âthe treatment of Merrick Garland.â I donât care about âthe treatment of Merrick Garland,â but I do pointedly care about the rule of law. Every elected Republican who opposed not the nomination, but the nomination process itself, just made up a non-existent, non-Constitutional âruleâ (that they would never apply to a Republican President) for purely partisan gain.
I say that again because it bears repeating: they didnât oppose the nomination of Merrick Garland, they opposed the nomination process itself. They didnât âmistreatâ Merrick Garland, they broke their own oaths to uphold the Constitution. And now here we are, a year later, pretending that that didnât happen. Every news outlet covering this story just glosses over that fact. Weâre all proceeding as if this is normal and fine.
If anyone thinks that breaking norms is some new thing with Mr. Trump, no, conservative Republicans have been breaking norms for years now. The current so-called President is just taking what they started and running with it.