The body of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia had hardly cooled before some Republicans, including a few presidential candidates, began demanding President Barack Obama had better not dare to nominate a replacement for Scalia.
It was the disgusting culmination of the arrogance, bullyism and contempt these Obama-hating obstructionists have demonstrated ever since the president was elected seven years ago.
The Republicans couldn’t win the White House – twice in a row – and so they decided in their vicious bitterness to attack the one who did win, twice – Obama, whom they have since treated as a foreign-born pretender, as a flesh-eating bacterium to the Body Politic. That determination to obstruct, by the way, is on record from the very mouths of those obstructionists. Thus, the relentless nay-saying began, with right-wingers absolutely refusing to compromise with anything the president proposed, even some measures they themselves had previously favored. Reasonable Republicans, for fear of Tea Party retaliation, lined up right behind the obstructionists.
And what’s unfortunate is all too many Americans bought into their nonsense, unfairly blaming the Democrats and the president for the “nothing-gets-done” Congress, an attitude that helped give rise to solve-it-all Donald Trump.
These congressional spoilsports have so long accused Obama of subverting the U.S. Constitution (and of everything else) that they’ve run out of accusations. And now – look who’s talking – many obstructionists are not asking but demanding Obama not nominate a replacement, despite the fact the U.S. Constitution states the president shall appoint justices, with Senate approval, to the Supreme Court.
It’s obvious why these barking dogs are doing what they’re doing. They are hoping the next election will sweep into the White House an ultra-right-wing Republican president who can then make a court appointment more in line with their extremism – another Scalia, for example. Hailed for his so-called brilliance, Scalia cast some of the most socially-economically regressive votes during the past three decades, including votes – to name just two – for Citizens United (unlimited campaign financing) and for gutting the most important portion of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
If these Obama-haters want to reject any candidate he nominates to the High Court, that is their constitutional right. However, besides demanding Obama not make an appointment, some of these do-nothings have promised to forbid holding a hearing for any nominee, period.
This is just the latest – and most un-American – of the anti-Obama assaults in the past seven years. These pouters have a right not to like the president, they have a right to vote against what he proposes, but they do not have the right to demand Obama fall to his knees in submission. Especially when the president has the constitutional right to make a Supreme Court nomination right up until his last day in office.
There are major decisions on the docket of the High Court which will affect our destiny. We need a ninth justice as soon as possible.
Obama should appoint a non-partisan judge of sterling virtue and far-ranging vision. And then, the Republican-led Senate should open hearings and confirm the nominee, unless its members can cite very good reasons for not confirming.
It’s time these losers cease their bully-power games and start acting on behalf of the nation – the way that good, rational, sane, old-fashioned Republicans used to do – until they let Tea Party radicals cow them into submission.
