Another GOP Senator Vows To Neuter Supreme Court

Most of the press has leapt on Richard Burr's comments about seeing a gun magazine with Hillary Clinton's image on the cover and being surprised there was no target on it. Said Burr, "Nothing made me feel better than, I walked into a gun shop, I think yesterday in Oxford. There was a copy of a rifle magazine on the counter. It's got a picture of Hillary Clinton on the front of it. I was a little bit shocked at that - it didn't have a bulls eye on it." Needless to say, the private gathering he was addressing roared with laughter at that. Burr was forced to make his obligatory and insincere apology today.

At this same private event, Burr also added that he believed that the new FBI investigation would show that either Clinton or her top aides had been lying under oath and said he believed Clinton would pardon herself if she were indicted after her election. Of course, there is no evidence for either.

But the real kicker was yet to come. Burr said that the chances that Merrick Garland will be confirmed in the lame-duck session were nil. Burr said, "Well, my answer to you would be it isn't going to happen -- period." He then vowed to deny Hillary the right to fill any vacancy on the Supreme Court, saying, "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." I always hate to say I told you so...but I told you so way back in May. Once Republicans were able to get away with not giving Garland a hearing, there was never any good reason to ever give a Democratic nominee a hearing.

The Republican party has become committed to subverting our democracy in every way possible because their white nationalist base can no longer win elections on their own. Their sole focus is making sure that they obstruct anything a Democratic president wishes to get done even if that also means rejecting any compromise that would advance their own policies, restricting the right to vote,  neutering the effectiveness of the judicial system, and possibly even rejecting the results of the election.

It sickens me as I watch Chuck Todd on MTP Daily with his two guests, one of whom was George Mitchell, talk about a "bipartisan cabinet" as a solution to this assault on our democracy. Todd even went on to say that progressives would never agree to the cuts that the GOP would want. That is probably true today. But it was the Republicans who vetoed the Grand Bargain that offered to make cuts in entitlements in return for a hike in taxes. There is no middle ground for the GOP and the idea that you can work with them in a bipartisan fashion is a pipe-dream. This unfounded belief that simply bringing the GOP into the cabinet and all will be well is fantasy. Any Republican who would dare join would immediately be excommunicated - just ask David Frum. The Republican party as it presently constituted can not be appeased, it cannot be negotiated with, it can only be defeated totally and once and for all at the ballot box. And that must be done and it must be done soon before the damage that the GOP does becomes irreparable.