Ever since the disgraceful treatment of Robert Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court by Democrats, the GOP has played a sucker’s game.  That has finally changed with the vacancy created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.  The Senate Judiciary Committee is playing by Democrat rules:

The Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee have officially declared they will not hold a hearing on anyone President Obama nominates for the Supreme Court.

In a letter [Tuesday], signed by all 11 Republicans on the 20-member committee, the members tell their Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, they will “not hold hearings on any Supreme Court nominee until after our next president is sworn in on January 20, 2017.”

"It's not about the personality," a committee member and Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, told reporters today. "It's about the principle."

The Democrats are already feigning outrage and have announced their plans to tell the Senate Republicans to “do their job.”

Go ahead, make my day.

We have videotape of Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, and Barack Obama all taking the position that the Senate should not vote to confirm a Republican in the lame-duck era of a president’s term.  They only convict themselves of hypocrisy with this stance.  Read this Washington Examiner account of the ways in which the Dems have doomed themselves.

Now, defense of the Second Amendment is on the table as an issue, for a Democrat president almost certainly would appoint to the Court a justice who sees no individual right to possess firearms.  For all the propaganda efforts of the left, the public is against them on this issue.

The same goes for abortion.  Sensible restrictions, such as eliminating partial-birth abortions, are supported by the public.

It is almost as if the rise of insurgent anti-establishment candidates has taught the GOP establishment something.