Republicans Seeking to Thwart the Constitution

Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker has wandered off the GOP reservation again - or escaped what is now the GOP insane asylum depending on one's views.  In her latest column in the Washington Post, she takes Republicans to task for their efforts to obstruct any Supreme Court nominee that Barack Obama may submit.  Not only is such action against the U.S. Constitution, but it underscores the divisiveness and hypocrisy that are now among the main hallmarks of the Republican Party and its angry white base.  Here are column highlights:

As Republican presidential candidates invoke Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s legacy, all insisting that his suddenly vacant seat shouldn’t be filled until a new president is in place, it is helpful to ask: What would Scalia do? 

First, Scalia would read the law and, without much chin-stroking, recommend the obvious intent of Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution, which reads: “[The president] shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint . . . judges of the Supreme Court.”

See? That wasn’t complicated. And the Senate can always reject a nominee. Yet Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) made it clear that no Supreme Court nominations would get to the floor.  . . . .

All Republican candidates have expressed agreement with McConnell, with Donald Trump being the most vocal and least nuanced: “Delay, delay, delay,” he said inimitably at Saturday’s debate in South Carolina, just hours after the nation learned of Scalia’s death. 

As unseemly as such political proclamations are so soon after the justice’s death, Scalia likely would have found the shenanigans childishly amusing. Unerringly faithful to the rule of law — and deferential to the executive and legislative branches — he would have understood the politics but not the point.

The law is clear.  But politics are something else, and Republicans have decided that, at least on this matter, the people should have a voice. Inarguably, with three justices likely to retire during the next presidency and Scalia’s seat now empty, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

But, if you’ll pardon this intrusion of logic, haven’t the people already had a voice? Didn’t a majority of the people reelect President Obama, and doesn’t he have nearly a year left to serve out his term? Lame duck doesn’t mean dead duck — and this president’s still quacking.

[O]riginalists would have to concede that it’s the president’s job to nominate a replacement for an empty Supreme Court seat and the Senate’s job to advise and consent — or dissent, as the case may be. Yet to Republicans, the idea of Obama fulfilling his constitutional responsibilities falls somewhere between apocalyptic and absurd.

So why would the GOP, professed stewards of original intent, seek to thwart the Constitution’s clear purpose? Again, not complicated.

First, because several cases that Republicans hoped would result in their favor hang in the balance. With a 4-to-4 vote, the lower courts’ rulings stand.

Republicans are playing with fire. Is this really a precedent they wish to set? Which of these candidates in the fourth or eighth year of his presidency would surrender his own nominating powers to a successor? And, finally, what if the next president is Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders?

The GOP’s calculation, apparently, is that the greater risk lies in Obama’s nominating a reasonably moderate liberal who passes all the usual tests that Republicans can’t rationally block. If Obama were feeling frisky, he might select a Hispanic or Asian judge, thus helping ensure that the Republican “Big Tent” collapsed from the weight of emptiness.

[I]t may seem wiser to avoid the advise-and-consent process, but hypocrisy takes no prisoners. You can’t attach yourself to Scalia’s originalist virtues and also ignore the rule of law he so passionately defended. 

The GOP's Out of Touch Presidential Contenders

Despite the Republican Party's claims that it is a "big tent" welcoming to all, the reality is that unless one is a far right religious conservative of near fanatic proportions, a white supremacist with a mentality well suited for KKK membership, or a greed driven plutocrat, there really is little room in the GOP tent for you.  This lack of inclusiveness and obtuseness toward modernity and the nation's changing demographics is demonstrated by the substance of what the GOP's would be presidential candidates pontificate about on the campaign trail.  Any window dressing of inclusiveness is just that, window dressing.  A column in the New York Times reviews how the GOP remains out of touch with those who do not fit within the narrow requirements for inclusion in the party.  Here are highlights:

For all the party’s self-congratulation about a field of official and unofficial presidential candidates who depart from the fusty norm, the truth is that they don’t depart nearly enough.

Yes, they’re a racially diverse group, including Bobby Jindal, who is Indian-American; Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, who are Cuban-American; and Ben Carson, who is African-American.

Yes, Rubio and Bush speak Spanish, as Bush did in Miami on Monday during his formal campaign announcement, which had the multiethnic flourish of a Coca-Cola Super Bowl commercial.

Yes, Cruz and Rubio are both under 45. Rubio in fact looks young enough to be Bernie Sanders’s grandson. He advertises an affinity for hip-hop and rap. He name-checks Pitbull and Nicki Minaj.

[B]eneath their playlists and campaign choreography, [the GOP candidates] aren’t so impressively in touch with the times either.

Although more than 70 percent of American adults under 35 support same-sex marriage, not one candidate in the sprawling Republican field has explicitly taken that position, and most have expressed impassioned opposition.

Although an increasing fraction of American adults, including about a third of those under 35, now pronounce themselves religiously unaffiliated, there’s no sense of that drift in the emphatic religious testimonials of most of the Republican candidates, including Bush, Rubio and Scott Walker, who introduces himself as a preacher’s son.

Almost all of them are at odds with young Americans’ belief in climate change and stated desire for immigration reform.

And none of the leading contenders has a pitch that strongly reflects a recent Gallup poll’s finding that more Americans label themselves socially liberal than at any point in the last 16 years. These Americans finally match the percentage of those who call themselves socially conservative.

Where’s the Republican presidential contender for them?

Where’s the Republican candidate who can enter into an important, necessary debate about the size, role and efficacy of government without being weighed down by a set of statements and positions on social issues that seem tailored to placate the religious right and to survive the primaries, not to capture voters in the center?

[T]here’s a void, and Hillary Clinton and her advisers have certainly noticed it. That awareness informed her own speech on Saturday, on Roosevelt Island, where she made many references to young Americans, to L.G.B.T. Americans, to minorities, to working women. Her remarks constituted a road map of the precise terrain that Democrats want to keep — or put — beyond Republicans’ reach.