Letter: How long is too long in GOP obstruction?

I find myself deeply pained by the attempt to turn the untimely passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia into a potentially ugly partisan battle.

Mitch McConnell and numerous Republican Presidential candidates are willing to stage said battle under the guise of letting the people decide his replacement. This approach, if successful, could potentially lead to a vacancy in excess of 11 months. I must confess that this length of delay exceeds my personal sense of outrage.

I would ask my fellow readers to consider what delay would exceed their personal sense of outrage. Would it be 12 months? Thirteen months? Fourteen months? Fifteen or more? Perhaps we could take a poll — the results might be interesting.

Whether we label it as God’s will or some impersonal accident of nature, we must all acknowledge that we have no control over when we breathe our last breath. All the same, it would be illuminating to put a numeric value to the point at which the limits of decency and good sense are exceeded by this transparently partisan maneuver.

In the interest of full disclosure I must admit that I am only a couple of years younger than the late Justice Scalia. I don’t know if I will awaken tomorrow morning or, for that matter, the morning when the newspaper perhaps sees fit to publish my thoughts on this latest manifestation of partisan antipathy that is so severely damaging this great nation.

This story was originally published March 1, 2016 at 7:00 PM with the headline "Letter: How long is too long in GOP obstruction?."