Republicans had a majority at the time that they stonewalled Merrick Garland. They assumed that they would retain the majority (which was a pretty good bet) so they would be able to prevent seating of the nominee.
Once Reid exercised the nuclear option it set a precedent for using it lagain. The filibuster has always been about keeping the majority from steam rolling the minority. But it's not something that can be found in the constitution and was really just a tradition. We now are living in an era where the majority can rule with an iron fist.
We've always been a democracy in name only. But right now I believe we are witnessing a complete death of the system. The party in power is rigging the game so fundamentally that it's going to be very very difficult to get power back from them.
While it horrifies me, I have to admit that the job that they have done gerrymandering all of the states that they controlled has been very impressive.
REDMAP ( The Republican gerrymandering project) has turned Texas into such a deep red state that I'm not sure even the massive demographic changes that are coming up are going to break us free. The Democrats in the state are almost completely neutered. The same has happened in North Carolina, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois etc.
The problem is that they had a wonderful plan to seize power but they had no plan to govern. The Republicans don't have any ideas in terms of governance. All of their ideas are dedicated to the destruction of the current system.
As so many have pointed out, they are the party of "no". But add into this the fact that very few people in the US have any real understanding of their own government (whether state, local, federal) and you have a recipe for a tyrannical democratic system. System in which people have very little power at all.
This is going to be a very long and very hard fight. The Republicans, having turned the Supreme Court into a partisan body, know that they can do almost anything and give it a veneer of legality.
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