Bill Press: The GOP: Funny and very, very sad

Breaking News: The Republican Party is in complete disarray. 

It would be funny, watching the GOP implode, were it not so sad. No matter how hard Republicans try, they just can’t get their story straight.

{mosads}Consider the following.

When it comes to selecting a nominee for president, Republican leaders say, “We can’t let the people decide. We have to have an open convention, so the GOP elite can decide who, other than Donald Trump, will lead the party.”

Yet when it comes to selecting a Supreme Court nominee, Republicans say just the opposite: “We can’t let the president decide. We have to let the people decide.” 

And then, just to entangle themselves further, some Republicans add a caveat: “We must let the people decide, unless they elect either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, in which case we won’t let the people decide, we’ll settle for President Obama’s man, after all.”

It does make your head spin, trying to keep up with the contradictory positions of today’s GOP, all of them asserted with utmost authority. So which is it? Do they believe in letting the people decide or not? Or just some of the time? More importantly, do they believe in the Constitution or not? Or just some of the time?

It’s over the Constitution, especially, where Mitch McConnell is leading the Republican Party in a Jonestown-like suicidal mission. Never in our lifetime have we witnessed a more feckless display of lack of leadership than in McConnell’s strategy on the Supreme Court.

Forget for a moment that Merrick Garland, Obama’s nominee, is an eminently qualified candidate for the court, a man any Republican president would have been proud to nominate. Regardless of Garland’s merits, under the Constitution, the Senate has its job to do. 

There is zero defense, and no historical precedent, for the upper chamber refusing to do its job — not holding a hearing, not scheduling a vote, not even shaking hands with the nominee — just because it happens to be an election year. The Senate doesn’t have to confirm him. Hold a hearing and vote no. But it should at least do its job. By refusing to do so, McConnell is totally politicizing one of the Senate’s most sacred constitutional responsibilities.

Now here’s what’s even more shocking: that Republican members of the Senate, many of them up for reelection and faced with what even conservative high priest George Will calls the party’s “incoherent response to the Supreme Court vacancy,” are blindly following McConnell’s lead over the cliff instead of repudiating him and remaining true to their oath to uphold the Constitution.

It’s enough to make even lifelong Republicans shake their heads in disbelief. As one leading GOP strategist told me this week, McConnell has given Democrats a golden issue for November and, in effect, handed them the keys to the White House. Thank you, Mr. Leader, but most Democrats would prefer that the Senate do its job — and let Democrats win the election on their own, fair and square. 

Press is host of “The Bill Press Show” on Free Speech TV and author of “Buyer’s Remorse: How Obama Let Progressives Down.”