Erick Erickson on The Resurgent is upset about all the games in Washington:
The reporters blasting McConnell for hypocrisy about not confirming a Justice in an election know damn well McConnell meant a Presidential election. But they don’t care. They’re trying to play gotcha. They know what McConnell meant, but they are amplifying and playing up some big inconsistency and only reporting half the facts.
The GOP knows damn well if this were a Presidential year, McConnell would be rushing through a nominee before the election regardless of his prior statement. You know he would. Stop pretending the Garland obstruction was anything other than preventing Obama from getting an appointment.
Everybody is playing games over this. That is to be expected. But what is happening in the process of gamesmanship is no one is really being honest about it. This is all part of politics. There is no noble rule about appointments. There is no high mindedness in the process. It is all partisanship.
Just be honest about it for once.
Here’s the problem: calling it partisanship and assuming this is how it should be is bloody well wrong. Why? Because it alienates at least a third of the population, and probably more than half, because of the way it was handled – lies, prevarication, and an overall absolute unwillingness to seriously participate in the task of governance.
And alienation is a problem, because when we’re alienated, we’re divided. Just about any successful group I can think of is successful because of trust. The trust that our fellow members, even those that we haven’t met yet, will treat us fairly when it comes to how we interact and, yes, govern ourselves. That’s the basis for why we’re morally outraged when, say, Senator McConnell prioritizes his little group of Republicans over the needs of the general citizenry of the United States by refusing to even consider Judge Garland for SCOTUS, and, even more importantly, that he didn’t treat the balance of the citizens with the minimal respect due to them by depriving them of the expected due process of considering Judge Garland before rejecting him.
Circling back to Erickson’s assertion that the media is being dishonest, then, I suggest they’re not. Instead, they are implicitly asking McConnell why he has, well, basically been a really bad American. If he now turns around and prioritizes the confirmation of whichever nominee Trump randomly pushes into the docket, he’s doubling down on saying that, you know, most of the citizens of the United States just don’t fucking matter. They’re just schmucks. So let’s treat them that way by taking care of our little subgroup first.
He’s weakening the case for holding his job, in reality. He’s sowing distrust. McConnell has stated that saving the seat formerly held by Scalia for President Trump to fill, a wait of more than a year, has been his biggest achievement. I continue to believe it’s an indelible blot upon his honor, one he’ll never live down – and any descendants will look upon with disdain.
The reporters questions aren’t hypocrisy – they’re a form of social shaming.
Is there favoritism by both sides? Sure. It happens. Some of it’s acceptable, some of it’s even in the rules. But when it comes to the big shit like this, rules and good faith, the act of breaking them weakens the Republic because trust is broken.
