McConnell has been looking forward to fucking the country for the next 50 years for, hell, a tortoise’s lifetime.
He could have used chlorine gas in the Dem caucus and gotten the same result. Big deal. It’s less important that it “paid off” than that it is an utter violation of all of the norms under which this “checks and balances” government has operated since its inception.
When has republican “norm shattering” not worked out for them? They pay no price for it, so it continues. Since the practical effect of it is to further break government when they’re not fully in control, it’s sort of a win-win from their perspective.
That it renders the country and our democracy barely if not totally non-functional seems to not dissuade them as it did their predecessors. Wearing flag pins and the like apparently is more important than actually honoring the foundations of our country.
There’s a reason that more modern countries opting for democracy choose parliamentary systems rather than presidential ones. Presidential systems are prone to this sort of breakage when one side goes extreme and decides that the norms that hold things together are impeding them for whatever reason.
Our Ruth BG really should have retired early in 2014 so that President Obama could have replaced her while Democrats still controlled the Senate.
Parliamentary stability also breaks down in the face of widespread social polarization.
This is one of the things that was hardest to deal with on that terrible Tuesday night. I was always outraged at McConnell’s ploy, but always thought it wouldn’t matter in the end because HRC would appoint justices that would bring the court out of the dark ages. I was so looking forward to the first liberal SCOTUS in such a long time, finally bringing some justice to the world, overturning Citizen’s United, dealing with this blatant voter suppression, rejecting all of the attacks on Planned Parenthood and women’s health in general, the environment, dealing with climate change, re-outlawing the death penalty, on and on and on.
Now all those things are dead…as is (likely) Roe v. Wade, the EPA, the CFPB, all financial and environmental regulation, nuclear disarmament, addressing wealth inequality, etc. etc. There’s lots more but I’m torn between equal parts rage and despair and can’t continue. I just turned 64 and now may never see another liberal SCOTUS. !#@$%!
Further, I’ll ask “What gamble?”. If Hillary won, they’d have pushed to confirm Merrick likely and Obama, being the honorable guy he is, would have let that go forward. So, in that case, they lose nothing more than they’d have lost anyway. If they somehow pull out a win, then they get whoever they want. I don’t see the real gamble for them.
the ends justify the means. Now with total control there will be zero boundaries to that sentiment. They are going to enact every conservative wet dream they ever had.
The democrats should not give them a cloture vote. Cloture requires 60 votes in the senate. No vote no seat on the court. They were not going to give Clinton a justice.
All systems break down with sufficient polarization, but Presidential systems have many, many chokepoints baked into them that make them especially susceptible to an extreme party who wants to break things. In a parliamentary system, if you win a majority you can govern normally. In a fragmented Presidential system, you almost always have to have a degree of cooperation with the opposing party to make anything work. It assumes a degree of necessary compromise that a parliamentary system doesn’t.
The ultimate effect is that the functioning branch that can keep things running assumes more power, so we get an increasingly strong presidency to overcome the dysfunction of congress. At some point, congress becomes vestigial and we have a true imperial presidency.
Yep, and you could time the remaining lifespan of the filibuster on a stopwatch at that point. If you seriously believe that the ‘Nuclear Option’ won’t be deployed the moment that Democrats become a serious impediment to total republican control, I suspect that you’re way more optimistic than I.
Make them use it. Trump must own all that he causes to be done. Unfortunately even that.
And all it took was for McConnel & Co. to value their partisan interest over the national interest.
This is just one example of a general phenomenon that has been increasing in recent years: GOP Partisan Interest Over National Interest – in a word, goppioni.
Unfortunately, this brazen act of goppioni will further delegitimize the Supreme Court.
Id like to thank those who backed Johnson in three states and in turn gave the election to Trump.
Good job guys
They were not Clinton voters
Were they Democrats?
On the bright side, I can’t wait to see the look on all those Libertarian faces when Attorney General Giuliani orders the federal crackdown on states that de-criminalized…
Getting giddy
By the way that was a question on that Trump reddit (does he support decriminalization?)
He never answered