Hoist on Their Own Petard

Time to turn my ire onto the GOP.

By this time in President Obama's first term, the Senate had approved a dozen of his cabinet nominees.  Yet, today, only four of President Trump's nominees have been approved, and now the Democrats have decided to play hooky rather than even meet to approve additional nominees.

President Trump and the GOP, of course, are crying foul.  But what goes around, comes around.

Sure, it would have been nice if we'd had an Attorney General in place when the immigration order was signed.  The implementation of the order might have gone smoother, and Sally Yates wouldn't have committed an act of insubordination that (rightfully) cost her her job.  And President Trump wouldn't have had to fire her, making her today's poster child for fake liberal outrage.

But what comes around, goes around.

When President Obama nominated Merrick Garland to fill the late Justice Antonin Scalia's seat on the Supreme Court, the GOP refused to even hold a hearing.  Let's break down the political gamesmanship of that.

Consider the degree to which a justice is an activist vs. a constitutionalist as being akin to a gas gauge in a car.  The activists are toward the "Empty" end of the gauge; the constitutionalists are toward the "Full" end, at least when it comes to upholding the Constitution and not legislating from the bench.

So Ruth Bader Ginsberg is the equivalent of running on fumes, while Antonin Scalia was full right up to the cap.

When Scalia died, the GOP wanted to replace him with someone pegging the "Full" mark.  If Obama had had his druthers, he'd have picked someone who made Ginsberg look conservative.  However, he knew the GOP would hold a hearing and reject that nominee like Shaquille O'Neal blocking a Muggsy Bogues jump shot.

Obama is nothing if not politically cunning.  He knew that he could get the GOP to paint themselves as obstructionist.  So he nominated Garland, a moderate conservative (on our gas gauge, Garland would be just to the right of the half-tank mark, but so close you couldn't tell the needle wasn't right on the line).  Did Obama want a moderate conservative on the court?  Heck no, he wanted an uber-liberal.  But he knew that he was safe in nominating Garland, because he knew the GOP wouldn't place him on the court.  It was a safe - and crafty - pick.

And why wouldn't the GOP compromise and settle for a moderate conservative?  Even with Scalia on the bench, this Supreme Court had already proven itself to lean activist.  So replacing a full-tank guy with a half-tank guy would shift the court further left.  It would be like siphoning off one-half of one-ninth of your constitutional fuel, which is going to shift you about a gallon toward empty.

Then, if Hillary had won the presidential election, she could replace Ginsberg or Kennedy or whichever justice is the next to pass on to that big bench in the sky with the kind of uber-liberal that she would want, and the court would be activist for at least a generation.

Brilliant strategy on Obama's part.  Ah, you say, but Mitch McConnell was equally brilliant, because he refused to hold a confirmation hearing on Garland, and Trump won, and he's now nominated another Scalia-like justice, and here we are.

No, Mitch McConnell was lucky.  Lucky, and dumb.

No one expected Trump to win the election but Trump, so McConnell took a "yuuuuge" chance in potentially letting Clinton replace Scalia with a justice pegged on the "E" mark of the gauge.  So McConnell gambled with justice, and he won, but only because he was lucky.  Very, very lucky - like put all your chips and the deed to your house and your IRAs and your kids' college funds and your wife's wedding ring on one number of the roulette wheel and win lucky.

(Don't ever do that, by the way - especially with your wife's wedding ring.)

And, he played right into Obama's hands.  Obama called the GOP obstructionist (rightfully so) and scored some campaign points for Hillary - though that wasn't enough to overcome her many negatives in the end.  So McConnell made the GOP look bad, as Obama knew he would.  And that was dumb.  The smart play would have been to immediately hold a hearing and vote to reject Merrick.

Now, McConnell's chickens have come home to roost, and they're leaving guano all over Trump's cabinet, and some is bound to wind up on Judge Gorsuch.  So I can't blame the Dems for playing tit-for-tat.

The GOP cries foul because the time is long overdue for the partisan tit-for-tat games in Washington to end.  But should the Dems be the ones to end them?  Should they be expected to take the high ground, when the GOP won't?  (As a conservative, I'd rather see the GOP take the high ground and take the first steps in stopping the gamesmanship, because whichever party does that will wind up looking good in the eyes of voters.  Why give the Dems that edge?)

The politics of "you do it too" and "you did it first" are tiresome.  They remind me of the backseat arguments between my brother and me, riding in the car on the way to Colorado for vacation.  It didn't play well with our Dad, who was inclined to just punish us both, and it doesn't play with the majority of voters, other than the most partisan among us (and among them, it only plays half the time).

So the GOP is reaping what it's sown.  We all want these games in Washington to end - well, most of us do - and it's high time they did.  If they don't, we're all in peril.  It's simply a matter of which party has the moral will to take the first step in the process.

And from where I sit, I don't see either of the current major parties fulfilling that role.