title:  Mitch McConnell Just Got Screwed By His Own Party: 16 GOP Senators Defect On SCOTUS Blockade
text: When President Obama announced his nominee to fill Antonin Scalia s seat on the Supreme Court, it took Mitch McConnell all of half an hour to announce that the Republican party would see to it that not a single meeting, hearing or vote would ever come of it in a purely toddleresque temper tantrum that not only scoffed at the Constitution and the president s executive authority, but at the American people, more than 60 percent of whom are uncomfortable with the high court in a 4-4 deadlock.McConnell has given every reason imaginable   other than a good one   why President Obama doesn t have the right afforded his office more than 200 years ago. His finest moment was when he admitted that NRA is running the show at Republican National Headquarters. Former McCain strategist Steve Schmidt said, Mitch McConnell s knee-jerk response after Justice Scalia s death is a public relations debacle for the Republican Party.  He s not kidding.According to a report from NBC, there are at least 16 Republican senators who have taken Mitch McConnell s directive to obstruct at even the common courtesy level and tossed it in the garbage where it belongs. Some are Republicans up for re-election in Blue States, like Kelly Ayotte from New Hampshire and Mark Kirk from Illinois, who will be the first to openly defy McConnell when he meets with Merrick Tuesday. Others are Republicans from red states who understand that it s better to allow the process to happen rather than prove to the American people that Republicans are incapable of governing effectively.Even with the moderates like Susan Collins of Maine and Jerry Moran of Kansas advocating for full hearings, the likelihood that Merrick would actually be confirmed is nearly non-existent, but that s not keeping GOP strategists from insisting that holding a hearing would seem much less obstructionist and rude. John Kasich, the last establishment candidate left for the GOP, has also said that Merrick Garland, at least, deserves the respect of a hearing. The man was, after all, nominated to fill a seat on the highest court ion the land by the President of the United States.That s the problem, though, isn t it? It s not that he was nominated, it s who nominated him. Republicans have become as predictable as they are reprehensible.Featured image by Alex Wong/Getty Images