Boomerang

In politics at any level, there is only one constant—hypocrisy. With the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, we're seeing that norm on display from BOTH parties. Positions that were supposedly entrenched four years ago have now reversed 180 degrees. No one who follows the political scene should be the least bit surprised, but if you examine the reaction of the talking heads who populate the media, you'd think they just fell off a pumpkin truck. They're shocked—shocked!!—that the GOP would want to gain a conservative majority on SCOTUS. And they seem sanguine that the Dems, who decry such coarse political maneuvers, would threaten to pack the courts, abolish the electoral college, and eliminate the filibuster in revenge.

Gerard Baker comments:

Try to imagine the reaction of Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and their Hallelujah Chorus in the media if a conservative Supreme Court justice had died weeks before the re-election bid of a Democratic president while that party also controlled the Senate.

See if you can make the statesmanlike words fit the mouths of these stolid custodians of honor, integrity and unswerving principle.

“It is our solemn duty to set aside our ambition to remake the court and patiently await the outcome of the people’s decision,” says Sen. Schumer, demonstrating once again why he has a glowing reputation for devotion to selfless virtue over ambition and political self-interest.

“Though we strongly believe this is a matter of the greatest importance for our nation, for life, liberty and the pursuit of our agenda, it would be wrong to fill this vacancy with just a few months left of this presidency,” says Speaker Pelosi, emerging perfectly coiffed from a locked-down hair salon to denounce hypocrisy and double-standards in politics.

“Fiat justitia, ruat caelum,” declaims a tearful Don Lemon on CNN, explaining to his less erudite fellow commentators that justice must be done, rules observed, whatever the lost political advantage.

The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the vacancy it has produced on the Supreme Court have produced a now familiar word spray on the importance of norms and the scourge of hypocrisy in the nation’s politics. Yet hypocrisy is itself a political norm with a long pedigree. At least since Brutus plunged his knife into Julius Caesar for the alleged crime of exaggerated ambition, politicians have been asserting one set of rules for their opponents and living by another.

As I noted in yesterday's post, the "new" Democratic party has over the past four years and a few decades that preceded them established a new set of rules for SCOTUS appointees. Those rules essentially say that anything goes, that an opposition party can do whatever it takes, no matter how vicious, to gain an advantage on the court. The GOP is now following the new rules.

And the threats of retaliation? In an era of Trump Derangement and hard-left politics, the Dems have demonstrated that doing "whatever it takes" has become their new norm. Nancy Pelosi threatens to use "all the arrows in her quiver." She better be very certain that none of those arrows is transformed into a boomerang.

UPDATE:

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) recalled the reprehensible treatment of Brett Kavanaugh by the Democrats in the last SCOTUS confirmation hearing and then tweeted:

Being lectured by Democrats about how to handle judicial nominations is like an arsonist advising the Fire Department.

It's worth noting that Lindsey Graham was among the GOP senators who often tried to be collegial and work with the Dems. In interviews over the weekend, he admitted that the Kavanaugh debacle radicalized his thinking on SCOTUS nominations. He now has no reservations about a vote on the new nominee before the election.

Boomerang!