THE ISSUE:

U.S. Senate Republicans say they'll refuse to consider any Supreme Court nominee from President Barack Obama.

THE STAKES:

This is a refusal to govern.

The death of Antonin Scalia — a Supreme Court justice whose term was marked by his avowed fealty to the original intent of the authors of the U.S. Constitution — has been met with calls by Republican senators and presidential candidates to essentially ignore the document they, too, profess to revere.

With 11 months left in President Obama's term, Republicans have put forth the argument that he should forgo his constitutional mandate to nominate a justice, and leave it to his successor. Or, they say, the Senate should ignore him. Since the Constitution fails to support their case, they cherry-pick history for alleged precedents.

So goes the latest chapter in a seven-year-long political saga that might be called "The Sour Grapes of Wrath," about a political party that refuses to accept the verdict of not one but two elections that put Mr. Obama into the White House. A party that now tries to act as if he is simply not there.

Whether it's threatening a government shutdown, taking the nation to the brink of debt default, or refusing to discuss the latest federal budget, the GOP is now a party functioning more on petulance than governance.

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Not that Senate Democrats haven't made Supreme Court appointments difficult for Republicans. When they were in the majority, they did, notably blocking President Ronald Reagan's 1987 nomination of Robert Bork. And New York's own Sen. Charles Schumer suggested late in George W. Bush's presidency that the chamber not approve any more of Mr. Bush's Supreme Court nominees.

But Democrats objected specifically to Mr. Bork; they did support Mr. Reagan's next choice, Anthony Kennedy. And Mr. Schumer was one senator. Today an entire GOP majority declares it will not consider anyone Mr. Obama nominates, utterly shirking the Senate's constitutionally prescribed role of advice and consent.

The Republicans claim that such late term appointments haven't happened in 80 years, ignoring Justice Kennedy's appointment in Mr. Reagan's last year. They point to an unwritten rule of the 1960s that no lifetime judicial appointments should be approved in the last six months of a presidency. Well, they have five months before that informal window closes, plenty of time to do their job.

Of course, the real issue here is that Republicans hope to win the White House in November, and preserve the narrow conservative majority on a court that's become a mini-legislature unto itself, deciding once and for all some of the most important issues of the day, from gay marriage to voting rights to abortion rights to the power of labor unions.

But our nation wasn't designed to run on what one party wishes were the results of the last election, or how it hopes the next one will turn out. The nation must be governed in the here and now, with three functioning branches of government in place. One would think Republicans would be doing all they could to prove they grasp this, instead of undermining it.