A chance to see what happens when cockroaches don't scatter when the lights are on

President Barack Obama nominated veteran appellate court judge Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday, setting up a potentially ferocious political showdown with Senate Republicans who have vowed to block any Obama nominee. Considered a moderate, Garland, 63, is currently chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. He was picked to replace long-serving conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, who died on Feb. 13.

And so it begins. Now we get to see Republicans display their true colors. When Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), whom Samantha Bee has referred to as “a chinless dildo,” stated that there should be no replacement for Scalia nominate until a new President is in office, the die appeared to be cast. Now we’re about to see what arrogance, intransigence, and obstruction look like.

Or perhaps the inevitable public pressure campaign against Republicans will convince them that intransigence offers no endgame in which they could hope to do anything but lose ignominiously. That’s the thing with arrogance, though; it tends to blind those driven by ambition. The insider’s game in Washington may look like a game of “King of the Hill” outside the beltway, but many of those inside it are so blinded by their own arrogance and partisanship to care about doing what’s best for this country.

I know nothing about Merrick Garland. Truth be told, I’d never heard of him prior to his nomination. I can’t speak to his qualifications or temperament. I don’t have an opinion as to his fitness to serve on the Supreme Court in a less adversarial, and partisan manner than Antonin Scalia. What I do believe is that Merrick Garland deserves a hearing and an up or down vote. Barack Obama has fulfilled his constitutional obligation; it’s time for the Senate to do theirs. There’s little down but that the American people also want to see hearings.