This is one of the really brilliant things the GOP has done. They've led us all to believe that it's just McConnell and a couple of other shitbags but that the rest of the Republicans are mostly OK.
That's a deliberate smokescreen. Notice that the "handful of Republicans" always happen to be in red strongholds? McConnell volunteers to be the public face of the GOP's bad policies because they know his seat is secure. Meanwhile, all the other GOP Congresspeople who support those same awful policies but might risk losing an election can stay out of the news and pretend it's not their doing.
McConnell was voted into his seat by a majority of the GOP Senators. They all know what they're doing.
Even so, D and R are both beholden to the American aristocratic wealth class for support, legitimacy, and power, so there is effectively no difference beyond a few, token, mild progressives in D who don't hold sway over the majority of neoliberals.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm warming up to the idea of the Democrats passing court-packing legislation for the Supreme and Appellate courts the next time they control both houses of Congress and the presidency. Especially if they can somehow establish a very strong super-majority requirement for all future judicial branch nominations that would be immune to stealth court-packing tactics like the Senate Republicans have been using.
The prior institutional restraints have broken down, and balance needs to be restored and new restraints implemented if the system is going to survive.
They will conveniently forget that were the tables turned, Republicans would not do the same.
People take less notice of transgressions when their party is in power. As much as we might like to think there’s universal recognition of the current administration’s misuse of power there’s a lot of people who support it - “to get things done”. People just hate it when it’s not the things they want.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/senate-poised-to-lim...
I don't think so. The idea is to force compromise by putting the threshold so far out of reach to eliminate fantasies that after the next election one party or other will be in the position not to have to compromise. That's the issue now.
The idea that a minority would try to literally destroy another branch of government for some reason seems so remote and so extreme that I'm not sure if it's worth considering. What would the political calculus be for trying to block the workings of the court system?
Actually, that is specifically the reason some supermajority rules were lifted [1]. Do you recall Merrick Garland?
The filibuster is abused similarly [2].
[1]: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2018/06/04/senate-obst...
[2]: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brookings-now/2013/11/21/char...