The headline in the Washington Examiner last week was infuriating for conservatives: "McConnell blasts Democrats for stalling 128 Trump nominees."

But if you are a conservative, you would be wrong to be angry at those darn Democrats for acting like, well, Democrats. The problem isn't the Democrats; it is the haplessness of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who keeps trusting the opposition party to act like, well, Republicans. McConnell is the Wile E. Coyote of politicians, and if you expect him to ever eat the Road Runner Democrats for lunch, you need to watch more cartoons — seriously.

Here's the gist of the latest episode, as reported by the Examiner:

“Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's … office charged Wednesday that 128 of Trump's nominees have faced votes to end debate on those candidates, a practice Republicans say is aimed at slowing down the pace of considering them. According to data from McConnell's office, the last six presidents combined saw just 24 of these procedural votes for their nominees during their first two years in office.”

So let me get this straight: Halfway through President Trump's first term, more than 100 appointees are stalled in the Republican-controlled Senate by parliamentary rules approved by Republicans — and we are supposed to blame … Democrats?

No, it’s McConnell’s fault. The truth appeared in the last paragraph of the story:

“By using current Senate rules to demand a vote to end debate on nominees, Democrats are able to delay final votes on these candidates by 30 hours. Republicans have considered whether they should change Senate rules so that only eight hours would have to elapse after these procedural votes, instead of 30.”

The key words in that paragraph are “Republicans have considered.” President Trump is expected to run the government of the United States by appointing competent people as judges, ambassadors, U.S. attorneys, you name it, and meanwhile the Republicans who run the Senate are there to “consider” things. That just about sums it up.

Of course, even when Republicans manage to do more than consider things, they tend to screw it up. How did Paul Ryan manage to be speaker of the House for three-plus years and accomplish nothing more than ensuring that Democrats would take over the House for the next two years?

It would be easy to develop a grand conspiracy theory where establishment Republicans are working hand-in-hand with Democrats and embedded bureaucrats to ensure that no outsider could come into the government and upset decades of corrupt sweetheart deals and entrenched power. Call it the Deep State. But we don’t have to go there when there is an easier, more obvious solution at hand — sheer bumble-headed, arrogant Wile E. Coyote incompetence. The coyote may be good at blueprints and procedures, but getting results is not his strong suit.

Take McConnell’s refusal to discard the “Senate institution” of the filibuster, for instance. If McConnell had listened to President Trump about restoring majority rule in the Senate two years ago while Republicans held the majority in both houses of Congress, the GOP could have dramatically shifted policy on every major issue facing the country. Border security? You got it. Tax reform? You got it. Obamacare repeal? You got it. Late-term abortion restrictions? You got it. Spending cuts? You got it.

But what we got instead was McConnell’s stubborn insistence that the institutions of the Senate (not, it is important to note, the Constitution) were to be upheld. Actually, the Constitution provides that a simple majority, rather than a super-majority, in both the House and Senate is sufficient to do business in most cases. Founding Father James Madison spelled out the reason in Federalist Paper No. 58:

“In all cases where justice or the general good might require new laws to be passed, or active measures to be pursued, the fundamental principle of free government would be reversed. It would be no longer the majority that would rule: the power would be transferred to the minority.”

McConnell is governing as majority leader with the mindset of a minority leader, and as a result may very well lead Republicans backward in the 2020 elections. The inability to pass legislation is not a very attractive trait in a legislator. Just ask Paul Ryan.