"And no rule of civility demands the confirmation of justices who would leave an abusive president unchecked and use raw judicial power to roll back a century’s worth of social progress."

"There is nothing civil about rushing a nominee to replace Kennedy before the midterm elections."

Well, that's the perfect embodiment of what I mean by my tag "civility bullshit."

It's from E.J. Dionne Jr., "Don’t want a right-wing Supreme Court? Do everything you can to stop it" (WaPo). Everything?!

All the recent talk about civility should not stop opponents of a right-wing court from doing everything in their power to keep the judiciary from being packed with ideologues who behave as partisans.

It seems to me Trump won the election and he has the appointment power. He made Supreme Court appointments an issue and was strikingly clear about who he would appoint. I understand the motivation to oppose and obstruct him, but I don't think opposing him or going down without a fight has anything to do with civility. If those who want Trump's nominee confirmed are talking about civility, then they are the one's doing civility bullshit, and Dionne is just calling them on it.

But Dionne is doing a little something more: "There is nothing civil about rushing... no rule of civility demands confirmation...." He's gesturing (weakly) at the idea that there is something uncivil about rushing and that there is a rule of civility that demands that the Senate wait. The thing gestured at is hard to defend, so why not dribble out statements about what is not and avoid the trouble of making the difficult point? I'll say that too is a kind of civility bullshit.

But most of Dionne's civility bullshit is out and proud: He doesn't care about civility when it holds his side back. Because the other side is so awful it doesn't deserve the niceties that developed in the mythical past when good people amicably jousted over differences.