title:  Republican Senator Admits Supreme Court Blockade Is About Keeping It Conservative (VIDEO)
text: The election is just an excuse for them to ignore the Constitution and the will of the American people for partisan gain.Last week, President Obama nominated moderate judge Merrick Garland to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court left by recently deceased Justice Antonin Scalia.That must have been a shock to Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, who opined prior to the announcement that he didn t think Obama would pick a  good man  like Garland for the position.Boy, was he wrong.And now that President Obama has picked a nominee who should be a lock for the high court, Senate Republicans are beginning to reveal what their contentious obstruction has been about all along.On Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell openly admitted that the aim of Senate Republicans is to make sure a conservative takes Scalia s spot on the bench so that the Supreme Court will remain a conservative-leaning institution that can continue to prop up the right-wing agenda while rolling back progressive policies that have served this country well for decades.McConnell even went so far as to claim that Merrick Garland is too liberal for Republicans to consider even though Garland is a centrist and his rulings prove it.That brings us to Senator Orrin Hatch, who on Monday also admitted that Republican refusal to hold hearings for any Obama nominee is about making sure liberals don t take over the Supreme Court for the next thirty years and make  wrong  decisions on issues like abortion and guns that the GOP disagree with. If you look at what s happened since, there are a lot of questions in many of the Republicans  minds on whether he would be wrong on just about every issue that Republicans think are important,  Hatch said.  From abortion to gun rights to the Second Amendment to all kinds of other union and anti-union type things. Hatch then claimed that Democrats would do the same thing if the roles were reversed and then returned to using the election as an excuse to not do his job. If the roles were reversed and we had a Republican president and a Democrat [sic] control of the Judiciary Committee, I guarantee they would never let a vote. This is one of the most horrific campaigns I ve seen. You would put this right in the middle of that? It would be a terrifically sad thing, and I think it would demean the court. Of course, the roles have been reversed before. In 1987, Ronald Reagan nominated right-wing extremist Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. Democrats strenuously objected to Bork s views on women s rights and civil rights but despite controlling the Senate, Democrats still held hearings on Bork s nomination and even held a confirmation vote, which Bork lost.But the point is that when Democrats were in the same role Republicans are in now they chose to do their jobs and did not outright refuse to hold hearings on Reagan s nominee. Reagan would go on to pick moderate Anthony Kennedy as the nominee and he sailed through the Senate and has been a fixture on the high court ever since.What Republicans are doing now, however, is completely different. President Obama did not pick a staunch liberal as his nomineee. He picked a moderate like Reagan eventually did. But Republicans are refusing to even hold hearings because what they want is a conservative nominee. And Hatch admitted as much. You can t just put politics aside,  Hatch said.  In every respect, this is probably the most important pick in many decades. If they succeed in taking over the Supreme Court, they ll have control over for probably 30 years. Hatch literally just admitted that Senate Republicans are refusing to their jobs because they are holding out for a conservative nominee, which means this blatant obstruction could last for more than year, especially if a Democrat wins the presidency in November.Here s the video via KSTU.Looks like the only way to make the Senate do their job is to give it back to Democrats. Because if we don t, Republicans will keep the Supreme Court at eight Justices for as long as possible, and that just won t work in the long term as tie cases are not settled cases and will just add a greater workload to an already stressed judicial branch. That s not what the American people want  or deserve. Featured image via screenshot