"Now, facing another presidential election that they expect to lose, Republicans are caterwauling about Democratic calls to expand the court. As they prepare to jam through Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, Republicans are shocked — shocked! — that Democrats would contemplate playing constitutional hardball just as Republicans do. If Democrats jettison the Senate filibuster and add judges to the Supreme Court, Senator Ben Sasse said on 'Fox News Sunday,' they’d be 'suicide bombing' American institutions.
"Say this for Republicans: They are very good at umbrage. It might even
be sincere; from Reconstruction to the New Deal to the civil rights
revolution, conservatives have long felt genuinely victimized by the
prospect of equality. That doesn’t mean, however, that bad-faith
right-wing arguments about the courts merit a respectful hearing. [snip]
"... On Monday, the first day of hearings for Barrett, Senator Sasse delivered a sanctimonious lecture about 'eighth-grade civics,' denouncing proposals to 'change the outcome of what courts do in the future by trying to change the size and composition of the court.' It was hard to tell if he’s really that pompously oblivious to Republican hypocrisy, or if he was just trolling. Maybe it doesn’t matter.
"Republicans
once insisted that Merrick Garland, Obama’s final Supreme Court
nominee, didn’t deserve a hearing because the election was only 11
months away. They should be taken exactly as seriously when they claim,
after nearly four years of Trumpism, to care about the unwritten rules
of American governance." -- Michelle Goldberg, in "Republicans' Galling Bad Faith About The Supreme Court." Perhaps others in the media will stop repeating bad faith Republican talking points about the courts. The norm- demolishing Trumpist Republicans have sown the wind; after the election, they must reap the whirlwind.
