The GOP’s Dysfunction Is Our Dysfunction Now

[applegrove]

BY SCOTT LEMIEUX at the New Republic

https://newrepublic.com/article/138418/gops-dysfunction-dysfunction-now

"SNIP.............


The next president will enter office with a potentially pivotal Supreme Court seat vacant. It’s an issue that may pale next to such world-historically important questions as Hillary Clinton’s email management, but it’s still very important. If Clinton captures the White House but Republicans retain the Senate, it is extremely likely that the Supreme Court blockade the GOP started in March will persist for four more years. Just as congressional Republicans have reconciled themselves to Donald Trump, they have already convinced themselves that the only principled course is to deny Clinton the ability to nominate anybody to the Supreme Court. The result would be the hobbling of an entire branch of government, which is just one example of how the chaos of Trumpism will live on even if he loses the election on November 8.

...............

On the one hand, the stakes of filling the Supreme Court seat are huge. Even a moderate like Garland would be the most liberal median Supreme Court vote in nearly 50 years. On the other hand, all evidence suggests that the political costs of refusing to fill Scalia’s seat would be negligible. The obstruction of Garland has gotten virtually no attention during the presidential campaign. The general public pays very little attention to the Supreme Court. Legal scholars will fret that the Court won’t be able to efficiently resolve circuit splits, but virtually nobody will change their vote because of it. Republican senators have much more to worry about from primary voters who would be furious at any senator who voted to shift the Court well to the left than from a general electorate that will almost certainly ignore Republican obstructionism yet again.

Most congressional Republicans have embraced Donald Trump, despite his countless disqualifying characteristics, for a simple reason: He’ll sign the legislation that Speaker Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell put on his desk. When norms get in the way of the political and policy interests of the contemporary Republican Party, so much worse for the norms. The Supreme Court will not be an exception to this growing trend, proof that the cancer of Trumpism won’t be excised from the party even if Trump loses on Election Day.

..............SNIP"