Something is brewing in the Republican Party - something that's profoundly anti-democratic and looks a lot like sedition.
After Antonin Scalia died back in February, conservatives stuck to the same basic line about the opening his death created on the Supreme Court.
We can't fill that opening, they said, until the American people choose the next president who, of course, appoints the proposed justice.
Although this talking point ignored the fact that the American people had already voted for a president with the power to pick Scalia's successor back in 2012 when they overwhelmingly reelected President Obama, it did have one saving grace: it at least gave lip-service to the idea of democracy in our republic.
Which is noteworthy - because lately conservatives haven't even bothered to sound like they respect the will of the people.
A growing number of Republicans now say that the next president should only get to fill Antonin Scalia's seat - and really any open Supreme Court seat - if that president is a Republican.
If the next president is a Democrat - AKA Hillary Clinton - these Republicans say they're not going to her let her put anyone on the Supreme Court.
John McCain and
Ted Cruz have said as much in recent in recent weeks but the latest Republican to take this position is North Carolina
Senator Richard Burr - who said THIS during a recent event in his home state.
"And if Hillary Clinton becomes president, I am going to do everything I can do to make sure four years from now, we still got an opening on the Supreme Court."
Republicans like Burr have now moved from obstructionism to outright sedition.
What they're doing now with the Supreme Court is insurgency by other means - it's political terrorism - and it's yet another example of how their party has moved outside the mainstream of American politics into the fantasy-land of reaction.
But while the right's blockade of the nation's highest court gets all the headlines - it's just one way that they're laying siege to our court system - and our democracy.
Their war against the judiciary is a two-pronged attack - and it has much to do with the shadowy world of dark money as it does filibusters in the Senate.
-Thom
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