A former NC congressman understands what the former president apparently does not. “He still seems not to get what the Republican Party has become,” Brad Miller tweeted Friday night in response to President Barack Obama’s statement on the passing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg:
“Four and a half years ago, when Republicans refused to hold a hearing or an up-or-down vote on Merrick Garland, they invented the principle that the Senate shouldn’t fill an open seat on the Supreme Court before a new president was sworn in,” Obama wrote.
“A basic principle of the law — and of everyday fairness — is that we apply rules with consistency, and not based on what’s convenient or advantageous in the moment.
“The rule of law, the legitimacy of our courts, the fundamental workings of our democracy all depend on that basic principle. As votes are already being cast in this election, Republican Senators are now called to apply that standard,” Obama wrote.
Fat chance. This is not a republic governed by rules and norms anymore. Not so long as Donald Trump holds the White House and Republican leaders push empty patriotic slogans while undermining everything they claim to believe.
It has been clear for decades, their faith in this constitution, this republic, all along has been as phony as Trump University and the Trump Foundation. They have simply found a leader corrupt and shameless enough to wear it in public. As their base shrinks and demographics turn against them, they might have moderated their stances on immigration and minorities as their own 2012 post mortem suggested. But no.
Instead they retrenched. They had already gerrymandered their way to ensuring minority rule in state houses across the country, demonstrating a willingness to hang onto power by any means necessary.
There are no rules here. No norms that remain inviolable. One person, one vote? Disposable. Rules? Consistency? Everyday fairness? Those are for suckers and losers. Ask the man leading the Republican Party.
In Field of Dreams, James Earle Jones’s character acted as if there were no rules to chase an intruder from his apartment. Confronted with his own history of pacifism, he relents and puts down the crowbar. Terence Mann had a conscience. Don’t expect McConnell and his allies to.
Democrats on the Hill had best come to terms with that.
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