What is it about Republican lawmakers that makes them want to screw over the American people and hurt their own political fortunes at the same time? The death of Supreme Court Antonin Scalia, coming about a year before President Barack Obama leaves office, means that he is constitutionally obligated to nominate another justice to the Supreme Court. But the Republicans in Congress, the same people who complain that Obama violates the constitution all the time, are vowing not to even grant a hearing to any nominee. What happened to the constitution you right-wing hypocrites?
What sickens me about the federal government is that it is always about partisan politics. No one in the White House or on Capitol Hill wants to put the interests of the American people first. They always have to favor their own political parties. I am pretty sure this is not the system of government that our founding fathers had in mind when they wrote the constitution.
It's clear enough that we'll always have conservatives and liberals. Both sides share the blame for the gridlock that constantly threatens to close down the government and mismanage our country. Either party, when in power, refuses to work with the other party to compromise on important issues. All they care about is how good they look in the polls.
This entire Presidential campaign season has been a miserable joke for everyone. The Republican front-runner, Donald Trump, is supported by about 1/4 of all registered Republicans, who make up about 24% of the electorate. That means about 6% of Americans actually want this guy to be our next President. If we are generous we can double that figure, maybe triple it, on the basis of how many non-aligned voters don't want Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders to be President. So if Trump gets the nomination he is almost guaranteed to lose the election.
On the Democratic side it's not so clear who the front-runner is, except that Hillary Clinton has more delegates than Bernie Sanders. The Democratic Party's screwed up system takes the whole idea of democracy and throws it out the window because its "super delegates" can vote for whomever they please. This is obvious a holdover from the days when corrupt party bosses decided who should win or lose the next election.
The Republicans are pissing off the rest of the country by stating they will delay any appointment to the Supreme Court until next year, when (they hope) one of their own will make the nomination. But even the conservative Washington Times thinks that's a risky proposition. If the Democrats win the White House the Republicans may not retain their majorities in the House and Senate. They have an opportunity now to compromise on a moderate justice.
New York Magazine is just one of several publications to take up the issue of what the Republicans are risking with their delay, delay, delay strategy. By returning to their "party of NO" behavior they once again show the American people that they have no intention of running a functional government. It doesn't matter if the Democrats don't make better choices than the Republicans in the long run, voters may turn against the Party of No in the fall and hand control of the Congress and the White House to the Democrats just so that something gets done for a change.