Dit kan die begin van die einde van die Hooggeregshof soos ons dit ken

Maybe Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) had the right idea after all. Maybe Republicans are willing to trigger a constitutional crisis over the Supreme Court.

Some conservatives certainly seem to be warming up to McCain’s controversial suggestion last week that Senate Republicans should dig in their heels and block any and all Hooggeregshof nominees put forth by a future President Hillary Clinton.

Who needs a fully functioning Supreme Court after all?

“As a matter of constitutional law, the Senate is fully within its powers to let the Supreme Court die out, letterlik,” wrote the Cato Institute’s Ilya Shapiro in a column Wednesday on The Federalist.

Shapiro is well-versed in constitutional issues, and his argument has a legal, if contorted, basis. Nothing in the Constitution explicitly stands in the way of senators who would be willing to destroy the nation’s highest court ― if not an entire branch of the federal government ― to stop Clinton from selecting judges who share her views.