The Wall Street Journal editorial board is flip-flopping on its acquiescence to President Obama's highly-qualified and noncontroversial nominee for attorney general, and is also calling for Republican senators to go even farther and extend their obstruction of Loretta Lynch to “all of his appellate nominees until he stops abusing his power.”

Right-wing media have struggled to find a substantive reason to object to Lynch, an experienced United States attorney who has received bipartisan acclaim for prosecuting terror suspects, human traffickers, and police brutality cases. Lacking any legitimate complaints about Lynch's widely praised record, conservative media figures like National Review's Rich Lowry have instead complained that Lynch, unsurprisingly, agrees with the president on key legal issues. On the March 22 edition of NBC's Meet The Press, Lowry doubled down on this absurd new standard, and insisted that until the president nominates an AG that thinks he broke the law, “so be it -- it's nothing against her personally, I don't care if she's Eliot Ness, the Senate can't do this.”

In contrast, the editorial board of the Journal originally recognized the noncontroversial nature of Lynch's nomination, and concluded last November that “Republicans have enough high priorities in the next Congress that the bar should be high for challenging non-judicial nominees who seem to be qualified and honest.” But in a March 22 editorial, the Journal switched gears and joined the campaign to prevent a vote not only for Lynch, but for all future circuit court nominees as well:

These columns believe that Presidents deserve their cabinet nominees in nearly all cases, but Mr. Obama's governance presents Congress with a larger Madisonian dilemma.James Madison designed a constitutional system of checks and balances to prevent executive or legislative tyranny. This works best when Presidents and Congresses assert their legal powers but step back from constitutional excesses that lead to judicial intervention or political crises. [...] The Lynch hold signals that the GOP Senate should consider using its advice and consent power more aggressively -- as a constitutional response to Mr. Obama's unconstitutional abuse of his executive authority. In her confirmation hearings Ms. Lynch defended Mr. Obama's executive order on immigration, which is a fair reason to vote against her, though Mr. McConnell and other Republicans should explicitly repudiate the false racial charge on the Senate floor. The more fruitful area for resistance may be on Mr. Obama's appellate-court nominees, as Curt Levey recently argued on these pages. Simply refuse to confirm all of his appellate nominees until he stops abusing his power. This would be proportionate political justice after Messrs. Obama and Reid broke Senate rules to pack the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals last year.

The editorial didn't even bother to pretend that Lynch is a contentious nominee, instead arguing that it was perfectly acceptable to block her nomination over Democrats' unrelated objections to an “obscure abortion-funding provision” in an anti-trafficking bill that would expand the Hyde Amendment to block not only federal funding for abortions, but private funds as well. The editorial named no specific concerns with regard to Lynch's stellar resume that should preclude her from being confirmed as attorney general, only that Republicans should block her because the Journal just really, really doesn't like Barack Obama.

In its November editorial, the Journal argued that, “Barring some future revelations, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York isn't likely to stir a partisan brawl with the new Republican Senate.” But none of the justifications the Journal currently offers in its newfound opposition to Lynch are "future revelations" about the nominee, unless the editorial board was somehow shocked that Lynch didn't declare the president a lawbreaker during her confirmation hearing. The Journal's additional call for Republicans in Congress to refuse to even consider the qualifications of judicial nominees ignores the fact that President Obama has already faced unprecedented obstructionism from the GOP throughout his presidency, who have prevented numerous highly-qualified nominees from being confirmed to high-level executive branch or judicial positions.

For the Journal, it also apparently doesn't matter that Lynch has received broad support from conservatives like News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch, Republican senators Lindsey Graham and Orrin Hatch, not to mention Fox News' Bill O'Reilly and Megyn Kelly. Most recently, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani came out in support of Lynch, telling reporters that “I am a Republican and I think I could probably be described as a very dedicated Republican ... I find Loretta Lynch not only to be an acceptable appointment. I find her to be an extraordinary appointment.”

Yet Lynch has already waited over four months to be confirmed despite the fact that Senate Republicans like Sen. John Thune (R-SD) and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) had previously promised that she would “receive fair consideration” after the Republican-led Congress took over in January. These same Republicans have instead gone back on their promise of a vote on Lynch for attorney general, and if the Journal has its way, she won't be the only nominee to receive such treatment for the remainder of Obama's presidency.