The key question is: if there were presently a Republican president in the White House, what would the GOP say about the president’s right to nominate a jurist to the Supreme Court? I think it’s very likely that in such circumstances the Party leaders would urge the president to nominate the next Justice to fill the empty place left by the untimely death of Justice Scalia.
They would urge him to do so before the next election in November because the Democrats could win; indeed, they would say to him, “Mr. President, we will guarantee your nominee a hearing and confirmation vote in the Senate!”
All talk of it not being proper to nominate someone in the last year of a president’s term would magically vanish in a heartbeat, of that much you can rest assured!
This position is the exact opposite of what they currently contend while there is a Democrat in the White House. Why? Simple: the Republican Party leaders fear that a nominee from President Obama will change the majority on the Supreme Court from conservative to liberal.
What is getting lost in the shuffle is a certain expectation in a democracy regarding ethical conduct in our elected representatives: namely, the notion that a person elected to office should hold consistent political principles. Instead, when his or her views and actions are determined entirely by expediency, we begin to witness a corruption of the political values established at the founding of our nation.
Nothing in the Constitution prevents any president from nominating an individual to the Supreme Court after a vacancy occurs; to the contrary, the most logical and consistent reading of the highest law of the land can lead to only one conclusion: the Constitution expects the president to fulfill this duty in a timely manner.
The Founding Fathers did not waste words; the president has the right and the obligation to nominate a justice to the Supreme Court.
It is sheer nonsense verging on lunacy for a Republican to argue otherwise or that the Founding Fathers meant to say “except when it’s a Democrat in the last year of his second term of office and is not qualified to be re-elected to a third term.”
The Republicans here have exposed themselves as thorough hypocrites obsessed with the game of power. What many have suspected, their actions now confirm. This Party once represented respect for the presidency as well as respect for the Constitution and the laws of the land.
Whatever else might be said, moderate conservatives once were willing to say as much openly but lately have remained strangely silent; they have acquiesced or been cowered into submission while their party has been hijacked by others.
Now an ultra-conservative wing of the Republican Party goes so far as to actively undermine the authority of the president of the United States! They threaten the democratic process by stating the Senate will refuse to act upon its Constitutional obligation to consider the president’s nominee, even before they know who the nominee is!
Imagine if you would that President Obama nominated a jurist as conservative as Justice Scalia; would it make sense for the GOP to delay the process? There can be no thought that they are acting constitutionally or logically. They are acting like children throwing a temper tantrum, out of petty spite and irrational emotional disorientation.
They are simply shocked and dismayed that a Justice of the Supreme Court died while a Democratic President is in office, and rather than accept this simple fact they would dare threaten to disobey the Constitution itself!
Heretofore, people could debate which party shared the larger share of blame for the gridlock in Washington D.C. and which party prevented the government from fulfilling its obligations in as timely a manner as possible. The answer is clear now. The GOP has become the Party of open obstructionists.
If they can’t get their own selfish way, they refuse to cooperate in a bipartisan manner. Such blatant arrogance!
They have previously shown a willingness to shut down the government itself in a kind of bizarre blackmail-and-hostage-taking maneuver—only this time instead of a person that a criminal holds for ransom, the hostage is the U.S. Government.
Imagine if you would a group from outside the U.S. approaching the U.S. Senate chambers and physically preventing them from carrying out their sworn duties. Would we not all be outraged in the extreme? Would we not consider this a fundamental threat to our democracy, to our very existence as a free people?
And yet, what else can be said when we discover that such a group does exist and even now is exercising its most pernicious influence to undermine the presidency and the Constitution?
That group which is preventing our constitutional democracy from operating normally and moving forward is to be found within the Senate itself!
When their so-called political principles are so outrageously and inconsistently applied, when their political maneuvering speaks of nothing but flagrant hypocrisy and political deception on a grand scale, our democracy is surely in just as much danger as if an external group opposed to American democracy had taken the Senate hostage and prevented them from voting!
Ask yourself this one key question: if there had been a Republican president in the White House when Scalia died, would the current GOP leadership have been opposed to a Republican president immediately nominating a replacement to the Supreme Court before the fall 2016 election?
Would they have said, “please Mr. President, don’t exercise your constitutional right to do so”? Would they have said, “if you nominate a Justice, Mr. President, we will refuse to hold hearings and we certainly never hold a vote”—would they have then dared maintain such views?
The answer is quite obvious; they would abandon their present position in favor of the opportunity to create and keep a conservative majority on the Supreme Court.
Anyone who thinks otherwise has not been following the GOP very closely; their political machinations and turn-on-a-dime expediency have outweighed all other forms of commitment to our constitutional democracy.
The right of the president to nominate a Supreme Court Justice cannot and has not ever been in doubt; the specific language is clear and unmistakable. That one of America’s two major parties should attempt to subvert and destroy a president’s constitutional right as clearly and unmistakably granted as this one is, must surely give all thoughtful American citizens pause.
It is not a pretty picture when we contemplate the future of this incessant civil war-like atmosphere developing within the GOP and between the two parties.
As to the question which party shares greater responsibility for Congressional gridlock and impotence? Given the GOP’s refusal to acknowledge the president’s right to nominate a Supreme Court Justice or their own obligation to vote upon the nominee, the answer now is revealed with startling clarity.
When the GOP refuses to adhere to the letter and spirit of the Constitution, the attempt to share out “equal blame” to both parties fails miserably. The President is fulfilling his constitutional obligations in a timely manner while the leaders of the GOP are refusing to fulfill theirs.
Who has taken the Senate hostage this time and who is preventing one house of Congress from fulfilling its constitutionally mandated duties if not the GOP?
Ask yourself again: if the current president were a Republican, would the GOP still be opposed to the president nominating a replacement?
The answer is obvious that, under such changed circumstances, the GOP’s position would flip. It is this flagrant contradiction of principles that is most worrisome; such inconsistency speaks of the wounded beast.
Their choice is to prefer actions of expediency rather than actions consistent with conservative principles. It is this penchant for expediency weighed against their “principles” that demonstrates conclusively how shockingly hypocritical and unethical the leadership of the ultra-conservatives has become!
Unwittingly, they may be sounding the death knell of the party by disregarding their constitutional obligations as well as those of the president of the United States. Either that or they are deliberately taking the first step toward the rise of a new kind of fascist ideology aimed at overthrowing American democracy itself.
“We have seen the enemy and he is us”; need we worry about foreign powers overthrowing our constitutional democracy when we have a faction here already well on its way to accomplishing the same end? Follow the Constitution and let the People’s elected representatives vote on President Obama’s nominee!
