Senate GOP Judicial Obstruction Simply Staggering

I guess I’m sounding like a broken record, but Senate Republicans refusal to actually fulfill their constitutional responsibilities just keeps on staggering me.  Take a look at this article describing just how many judicial appointments Senate Republicans are holding up in the increasingly unlikely hope that somehow Donald Trump will win the presidency. Earlier this month, not enough Republicans bothered to show up for a Judiciary Committee hearing to even make a quorum. And the most ridiculous thing is that some of these Senators are actually holding up nominees that they suggested for the post.

In Texas, which has a judicial emergency creating huge backlogs and caseloads, there are 12 judicial appointments waiting to be filled. Five of them have been publicly supported by Texas’ two Senators, Cruz and Cornyn. But now those two will not let any nominees go forward.

Other Republican Senators holding up their own nominees include Coats of Indiana, Shelby and Sessions of Alabama, Graham and Scott of South Carolina, Tillis and Burr of North Carolina, Heller of Nevada, and Paul and Majority Leader McConnell of Kentucky.  The Indiana vacancy has been open for about a year and a half; a South Carolina vacancy has been open for nearly three years, as has one held by the Senators from Alabama. Marco Rubio has actually pulled his support for his nominee to fill a vacancy open for nearly two years as has Senator Perdue in Georgia for a vacancy also open for about two years.

And I haven’t even mentioned Merrick Garland who is still waiting for a simple hearing, not even a vote, 103 days after being nominated to fill the ninth seat on the Supreme Court.

The level of obstruction is just staggering and the disregard for our judicial system is equally stunning. Yes, we all know that judicial nominations slow down in a presidential election year. But this is not what’s happening now – these are judicial vacancies that have been unfilled for two or three years already. Republicans love to talk about our Founding Fathers but I’m not sure that Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe ever considered that a group of people would ever get elected who would willfully sabotage effective government and not fulfill their duties as citizens and legislators.  Perhaps we need a new Senate rule, or even a Constitutional amendment, that would require the Senate to actually hold a vote on any nominee within one year of being nominated by the President.  As citizens, that is the least we deserve from our representatives.