Editorial: Congress must keep Supreme Court nominee out of political arena

Who is Merrick Garland?

Expectedly and unfortunately, our “public servants” have responded with “political piñata.”

Yesterday, President Barack Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland to fill the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat on the Supreme Court of the United States. Despite this decision being a momentous one that could affect our generation more than our parents’, Congress, the president and the media are more concerned with the guerilla warfare that has consumed Washington, D.C., than preserving the sanctity of the Supreme Court.

Let’s be clear — the Supreme Court has always been political. But the current cesspool that politicians on both sides have materialized has subsequently tainted the one branch that was founded to be exempt from the breed of poison politics we’re seeing in Washington today.

This feud trickled down from the White House and Capitol Hill and crept its way into the court, twisting the conversation from “Who is Merrick Garland?” to “What’s the best obstruction to further our agenda?”

We’ve seen the abject refusal from Congress to accept any of President Obama’s court appointees most recently. We’ve seen the disillusion-fueled fission of the Republican party after perceived betrayals by Republicans in Congress.

We’ve seen politics at its worst cause stalemate after stalemate, division after division. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, a Pitt alum, exemplifies that inconsistency and unreliability in his own poisonous rhetoric.

Hatch — the most senior Republican senator —is also guilty of talking out of both sides of his mouth, illustrating the party politics that have blinded many of the obstructionists from doing their jobs and protecting the Constitution.

Newsmax Media asked Hatch how he felt about an Obama nominee on March 13, when Hatch answered, “[Obama] could easily name Merrick Garland, who is a fine man.” He went on to add that Obama “probably won’t do that because this appointment is about the election.”

Of course, Hatch was wrong — Obama came through with Hatch’s initial preference.

But yesterday on Twitter, Hatch rejected the president’s pick, saying, “It’s not about the individual. It’s about protecting the integrity of the court.” He furthermore stated on CNN that the Supreme Court should be kept out of the political arena.

While Garland is vastly qualified to be a justice — he was valedictorian of his class at Harvard University and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School — he is also a moderate. Obama isn’t trying to excite liberals with a Ruth Bader Ginsburg 2.0, but rather is putting even more pressure on Republicans to admit defeat by offering what seems like a compromise.

It’s a game, and they’re playing it at the cost of the American people.

Government is doing us a disservice with their stringent differences and dogmas they’re so reluctant to veer from. They are perpetuating the party battle that has infiltrated the already dichotomous election year, and the media latches on to the catfight like a leech.

We can’t count on mainstream media to tell us who Merrick Garland is. We can count on the media and politicians to tell us who he isn’t — “he’s too moderate,” “he’s establishment,” “he’s not liberal enough.”

The appointment of our newest Supreme Court Justice needs to be about jurisprudence. Not ideology.