In the wake of President Barack Obama’s nomination of Chief U.S. Court of Appeals Justice Merrick Garland to fill the vacancy left by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, the Republican-controlled Senate has once again proven itself averse to action and efficiency of any sort with its refusal to vote until the end of the election. Galvanized into idleness by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Republicans have valiantly reaffirmed their commitment to preventing the current President from fulfilling his constitutional duty as acting chief executive of the country. Their justification? Since the American people will soon come to select a new leader, the decisions and actions of the one they have already chosen twice are no longer founded.
McConnell’s stiff-necked position on the response for Senate Republicans can only be the result of misinformation or intentionally bullheaded partisanship. When asked about his feelings on the President’s nominee—a widely known moderate described by SCOTUSBlog publisher Tom Goldstein as “essentially the model, neutral judge”—the majority leader replied that he would under no circumstances support a vote to confirm or deny Garland, maintaining the justification that the appellate justice’s confirmation would result in a dramatic shift of the court to the left. McConnell also said, “I can’t imagine that a Republican-majority Congress in a lame-duck session, after the American people have spoken, would want to confirm” Garland. Seemingly, despite their leader’s confidence in a favorable outcome for conservatives, Senate Republicans refuse to allow the rest of Congress to pass its judgment of Garland for itself, preferring to circumvent the process entirely, without any legal, ethical, or rational basis for their inaction beyond neglectful party politics.
Unsurprisingly, alongside the dreaded tenets of reason and common sense, precedent, too, sides with the President’s decision: in 1968, an election year, Lyndon B. Johnson immediately met the retirement of Chief Justice Earl Warren with a new suggested appointment, upon whom the Senate had no trouble voting. Similarly, Dwight Eisenhower’s 1956 appointment of William Brennan was met easily with Senate approval in 1957, demonstrating that, even through a purely historical perspective, the current Congress’s action is entirely unfounded.
So then, one might ask, what justifies Senate Republicans’ current inaction? The answer, quite simply, is nothing. It is the act of a party so blinded by gimmicks and strategic recalcitrance that it refuses to acknowledge even an unequivocal political concession and attempted push towards bipartisanship. As Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid told NBC, McConnell is “marching these men and women off a cliff.”
But the consequences of Senate Republican inaction are not restricted to the Republican Party; the Supreme Court bench seats nine justices, and it does so for a reason. With Scalia no longer present, the Court now consists of an even number of justices: four liberal and four conservative. The end result is easily predictable: as such landmark ideological cases as transgender citizens’ rights, abortion, and affirmative action steadily climb to the top of the Supreme Court’s docket, the bench will be perfectly divided along political lines—a classic recipe for deadlock. Already, Senate Republicans’ stalling has resulted in a 4-4 decision on the case of Hawkins v. Community Bank of Raymore, an unremarkable case dealing with a certain bank’s policy on wives’ guaranteeing of their husbands loans. Though relatively inconspicuous, this case demonstrates perfectly the ultimate result of a Senate voting block on Supreme Court Nominee Merrick Garland: utter, top-to-bottom government inefficacy.
Taking into account the recent rhetorical attacks on Washington gridlock from establishment-contested GOP frontrunner Donald Trump, Senate Republicans’ decision to perpetuate and exacerbate Congressional ineffiency is clearly a grave mistake even politically. The Republican establishment has been blindsided by the bombastic business mogul and continuously shocked by the sheer quantity of voters drawn to his populist rhetoric, but in reality, they created the conditions for his ascent. Republican voters have noticed the sluggishness and lethargy of the Washington behemoth, and they have realized that the Republican establishment is to blame. The same bewildered party leaders bewailing the popularity of candidates like Donald Trump or, formerly, Dr. Ben Carson are wholly responsible for their rise, and the block on Garland is just one installment in a steady plummet to total establishment incompetence. If the Republican Party still hopes to regain the credibility it needs to compete in the General Election or even take back its own primary, it must immediately end its embargo on productivity and vote on the president’s nominee. The American people demand action, and Senate Republicans have no more time to waste.
