Wednesday, January 4, 2017

Obstructing the Obstructors

Even though I realize that hypocrisy is all too common in D.C., I'm still angered when a brazenly disingenuous double-standard is shoved right in my face by a politician with no sense of shame whatsoever. I guess the voters in Kentucky are less sensitive than I am. They've been sending Mitch McConnell back to the U.S. Senate for 20 years.

Now Senate Majority Leader, McConnell did not invent the Republican policy of extreme obstruction of any bill or program not originated by his party, but he has certainly championed that policy over the last eight years. He is one of the main reasons the Senate has refused over the last ten months to do its job by holding hearings on Obama's last Supreme Court nominee. They didn't even bother making up a reason for this; they just said "it isn't going to happen." 

Now, however, Republicans control House, Senate, and White House, and McConnell has experienced some bolt of enlightenment. Trump has promised Supreme court nominees who are nothing less than terrifying, and Democratic senators are saying they'll do their utmost to block all of them. And suddenly, McConnell is certain that such obstructionism is "something the American people simply will not tolerate."  

I don't know if Democrats can rustle up all the votes they'll need to keep filibustering and otherwise blocking, but more power to them, I say. The GOP deserves a long taste if its own medicine. More importantly, the Democratic minority in the Senate is the only thing that stands between us and a nightmare Supreme Court.

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