We can pinpoint the moment when Republicans stopped buying into our 230 year national experiment in democracy. It was August 29, 2008 when John McCain introduced Sarah Palin to a national audience. All pretense of being a “loyal opposition” that could operate under the written and unwritten rules of “deference to the office” and compromise for the sake of the common good went out the window then the Tea Party was legitimized by the GOP.
From that moment on we’ve had a Republican party that does not view any of the actions of our duly elected President as legitimate, and has therefor dedicated itself to an ongoing policy of electoral nullification. The obvious current manifestation of that policy if the denial of a Supreme Court nominating hearing. This isn’t some secret skulduggery. It is happening right out in the open. And that raises the question, what’s next? What happens when the next President is elected? And let’s suppose that the next President isn’t a Republican. What does this policy of nullification look like in Secretary Clinton’s, or Senator Sanders’ first term?
My guess it that it goes on and expands to a general nullification of the legitimacy of the Supreme Court. As it unfolded, the nullification of Obama’s term was rationalized as an acute rather than a chronic malfunction. It has been described as “Obama derangement syndrome” or viewed through the lens of race, with the a generally accepted (if largely unspoken) sense that when a white person returns to that office, things will go back to normal. But does anyone still think that one year into this GOP primary season? Listen to Rubio, Cruz and Trump talk about Hillary Clinton and you know that regarding the Obama years as a crazy interregnum is fantastical thinking. Nullification as a strategy has taken root.
The new normal for the American right wing is “elect a GOP President or else.” That’s what is at the heart of this current anti-constitutional movement to deny Obama a Supreme Court nominee. It isn’t so President Hillary Clinton, or President Bernie Sanders can have the next pick. It is so the next conservative Republican President can have the next pick and thereby maintain the Court’s 5 to 4 legitimacy. Any other outcome is invalid at the outset.
Whether or not a democracy can survive such a state of affairs probably comes down to one simple question. Which will die first, the Republican Party, or American democracy?