Analysis | ‘Congress has decided to self-neuter.’ One senator’s compelling theory for why the Kavanaugh hearings are so ugly.

Analysis | ‘Congress has decided to self-neuter.’ One senator’s compelling theory for why the Kavanaugh hearings are so ugly.

Yes. ""At the end of the day, a lot of the pow­er del­e­ga­tion that hap­pens from this branch is be­cause Congress has de­cid­ed to self-neu­ter,” said Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), who used his 10-min­ute open­ing state­ment in the Kavanaugh hear­ings to in­dict his 534 col­leagues for the po­lit­i­ci­za­tion of the ju­di­ci­ar­y. Sasse's ar­gu­ment, which he broke down into four, professor-like bul­let points, goes some­thing like this: 1. Congress is set up to be the most po­lit­i­cal branch. “This is sup­posed to be the in­sti­tu­tion dedi­cat­ed to po­lit­i­cal fights,” Sasse said. 2. But in the name of politics, lawmakers have de­cid­ed to keep their jobs rath­er than take tough votes. “Most people here want their jobs more than they re­al­ly want to do legis­la­tive work, and so they punt their legis­la­tive work to the next branch,” Sasse said. 3. Be­cause Congress of­ten lets the ex­ec­u­tive branch write rules, and Americans aren't sure who in the gov­ern­ment bureauc­ra­cy to talk to, that leaves Americans with no oth­er place than the courts to turn to ex­press their frus­tra­tion with poli­cies. And the Su­preme Court, with its nine vis­i­ble mem­bers, is a con­veni­ent out­let. Sasse: “This trans­fer of pow­er means people yearn for a place where politics can be done, and when we don't do a lot of big po­lit­i­cal debate here, people trans­fer it to the Su­preme Court. And that's why the Su­preme Court is in­creas­ing­ly a sub­sti­tute po­lit­i­cal battle­ground for America." 4. Sasse's final point is one you can prob­a­bly guess is com­ing by now: That this proc­ess needs to change. If Congress did more legis­lat­ing, these Su­preme Court nom­i­na­tion bat­tles would get less po­lit­i­cal, he ar­gues: “If we see lots and lots of pro­tests in front of the Su­preme Court, that's a pret­ty good ba­rom­e­ter of the fact that our re­pub­lic isn't heal­thy. They shouldn't be pro­test­ing in front of the Su­preme Court, they should be pro­test­ing in front of this body.” "