The GOP doesn’t give a shit about the rules

Let’s be real.

Let’s be real.

As the fight— hopefully it’ll be a fight— over Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch heats up, we’re hearing a lot about the rules and decorum of the US government from credulous pundits across the country.

This line of thinking proposes that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell so loves the Senate that he won’t change the rules— or “go nuclear” and destroy the filibuster— to allow the nomination to go forward.

This is bullshit. The Democrats are already being played.

The GOP has spent the last two decades-plus preying on the sensibilities of the Democrats, who have an obsession with propriety and order within the stodgy Senate halls. The Republicans pushed against the rules and decorum in the Senate for the past six years in particular, obstructing the former President’s agenda at every turn.

They gave a number of reasons for these actions. Most of the reasons were framed as a desire to maintain the efficacy and dignity of the Senate as a check on the executive. Even the holdup on Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court was traced back to a few throwaway comments from Joe Biden near the end of Reagan’s second term.

Yet only two weeks into the new administration the GOP Senate leadership already suspended the rules to get Trump Cabinet nominees to a vote. So much for the dignity of the deliberative body.

It’s likely too much to hope that the Democrats will fight back, though it looks like the pretentious decorum is about to crack.

The Democrats may finally understand they’re playing by different rules than the other party.

But I’m not counting on it.

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