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Once upon a time, the death of a Supreme Court justice wouldn’t have brought America to the edge of constitutional crisis. But that was a different country, with a very different Republican Party. (Mr. Krugman attributes the "crisis" to Republicans. But it is the Left who invests so much in the judiciary. They rely on the courts to implement their agenda when the results of democracy are different than what they wanted.)
In today’s America, with today’s G.O.P., the passing of Antonin Scalia has opened the doors to chaos.
In principle, losing a justice should cause at most a mild disturbance in the national scene. (Except if the nominee is, say, Bork. Does anyone remember the explosion of vitriol when Reagan nominated him?)
After all, the court is supposed to be above politics. (No, it's not. It is the third branch of our government, there is no way it can be above politics.)
So when a vacancy appears, the president should simply nominate, and the Senate approve, someone highly qualified and respected by all. (Qualified, like Elena Kagan? Harriet Miers? Sotomayor? Douglas Ginsberg? How about these guys?
In reality, of course, things were never that pure. (Ahh, so Mr. Krugman admits it has never been this way, so his just-stated expectation is both unprecedented and unrealistic.)
Justices have always had known political leanings, and the process of nomination and approval has often been contentious. (Now he has completely walked back everything he previously wrote.)
Still, there was nothing like the situation we face now, (What? Obama filibustered Samuel Alito in 2006!)
in which Republicans have more or less unanimously declared that President Obama has no right even to nominate a replacement for Mr. Scalia — and no, the fact that Mr. Obama will leave soon doesn’t make it O.K. (Justice Kennedy was appointed during Ronald Reagan’s last year in office.) (History is apparently a weak subject for Mr. Krugman. Bork was Reagan's first choice, nominating him on July 1st, 1987. Reagan left office on January 20th, 1989.
Bork was rejected by the Senate on October 23, 1987. Anthony Kennedy was nominated on November 11th, 1987. Again note that Reagan left office on January 20th, 1989.)
Nor were the consequences of a court vacancy as troubling in the past as they are now. As everyone is pointing out, without Mr. Scalia the justices are evenly divided between Republican and Democratic appointees — which probably means a hung court on many issues. (Again Mr. Krugman notes the political nature of the Court. This situation was created by leftists, led by FDR, who pushed the Court into the political arena in contravention of their actual duties as outlined in the Constitution.
Now the Left has to live with the monster they created. Had the court not been politicized and invested in so much power [including the power to legislate], we wouldn't have this problem.)
And there’s no telling how long that situation may last. If a Democrat wins the White House but the G.O.P. holds the Senate, when if ever do you think Republicans would be willing to confirm anyone the new president nominates?
How did we get into this mess? (Um, yeah. It's you and those who think like you who deserve the blame.)
At one level the answer is the ever-widening partisan divide. Polarization has measurably increased in every aspect of American politics, from congressional voting to public opinion, with an especially dramatic rise in“negative partisanship” — distrust of and disdain for the other side. And the Supreme Court is no different. As recently as the 1970s the court had several “swing” members, whose votes weren’t always predictable from partisan positions, but that center now consists only of Mr. Kennedy, and only some of the time.
But simply pointing to rising partisanship as the source of our crisis, while not exactly wrong, can be deeply misleading. First, decrying partisanship can make it seem as if we’re just talking about bad manners, when we’re really looking at huge differences on substance. Second, it’s really important not to engage in false symmetry: only one of our two major political parties has gone off the deep end. (I.e., Republicans, of course. Democrats are always virtuous and fair-minded.)
On the substantive divide between the parties: I still encounter people on the left (although never on the right) who claim that there’s no big difference between Republicans and Democrats, or at any rate “establishment” Democrats. But that’s nonsense. Even if you’re disappointed in what President Obama accomplished, he substantially raised taxes on the rich and dramatically expanded the social safety net; significantly tightened financial regulation; encouraged and oversaw a surge in renewable energy; moved forward on diplomacy with Iran. (Wandering off topic, Mr. Krugman finds it necessary to defend Obama.)
Any Republican would undo all of that, and move sharply in the opposite direction. If anything, the consensus among the presidential candidates seems to be that George W. Bush didn’t cut taxes on the rich nearly enough, and should have made more use of torture. (Wandering still farther afield, the obligatory shot at G.W.)
When we talk about partisanship, then, we’re not talking about arbitrary teams, we’re talking about a deep divide on values and policy. How can anyone not be “partisan” in the sense of preferring one of these visions?
And it’s up to you to decide which version you prefer. So why do I say that only one party has gone off the deep end?
One answer is, compare last week’s Democratic debate with Saturday’s Republican debate. Need I say more? (Well, yes. It is intellectually dishonest and vapid to isolate a couple of recent events and deem them as emblematic of the issue he's talking about.)
Beyond that, there are huge differences in tactics and attitudes. (Well, that's true. Democrats regularly embrace scorched-earth tactics, character assassination, and name-calling.)
Democrats never tried to extort concessions by threatening to cut off U.S. borrowing and create a financial crisis; (In other words, Mr. Krugman doesn't like it when a political party pursues its objectives, if that party is Republican.
He probably longs for the old days when there was no alternative media, when Democrats were perennially in charge with little or no opposition, when Republicans were powerless and reduced to hoping to get invited to D.C. cocktail parties.
But now, we have the Rush Limbaughs of the world providing a counter to the incessant leftist tilt of the mainstream media, and Mr. Krugman doesn't like it. Republicans are slowly gaining the courage of their convictions and deciding to do something about them.
This is probably very concerning to leftists like Mr. Krugman.)
Republicans did. Democrats don’t routinely deny the legitimacy of presidents from the other party; Republicans did it to both Bill Clinton and Mr. Obama. (Whaa? Does anyone remember Bush v. Gore, and how G.W. was incessantly vilified as stealing the election? Hanging chads? The Florida recounts?)
The G.O.P.’s new Supreme Court blockade is, fundamentally, in a direct line of descent from the days when Republicans used to call Mr. Clinton “your president.”
So how does this get resolved? One answer could be a Republican sweep — although you have to ask, did the men on that stage Saturday convey the impression of a party that’s ready to govern? Or maybe you believe — based on no evidence I’m aware of — that a populist rising from the left is ready to happen any day now. But if divided government persists, it’s really hard to see how we avoid growing chaos.
Maybe we should all start wearing baseball caps that say, “Make America governable again.”
