Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Doctors famously take the Hippocratic Oath, a solemn pledge to do no harm. But in 2008, Mitch McConnell — the Senate’s own bleak little Boxturtle with a talent for procedural dark arts — introduced his own twisted counterpart: the Hypocrite Oath. Its core principle? Exploit any rule if it benefits you, ignore it if it doesn’t, and if the other side even thinks about using it, scream that they’re breaking the sanctity of the Senate. A simple creed, really. Elegant in its shamelessness. And Republicans have been chanting it like a Gregorian chorus ever since.

Because if American politics were a board game, Democrats would still be the earnest players reading the instruction booklet out loud while Republicans sit across the table melting the dice, stealing the money, and declaring themselves the winners because “that’s how we’ve always played it.” The Democratic Party, bless their norm-respecting little hearts, keeps showing up to the Senate like it’s a civic institution, while McConnell and friends treat it like a loophole carnival where the prize for cheating is getting to do it again.

Let’s hop in our time machine back to Obama’s first term, shall we? When McConnell and his band of procedural saboteurs dusted off the filibuster — not the cute “debate forever” version from civics class, but the industrial-strength “nothing gets done ever again” blockade — and used it so obsessively that even the History Channel ran out of Civil Rights Era flashbacks to compare it to. They took a tool once infamous for blocking equality and turned it into their daily multivitamin. The purpose? Making sure anything with Obama’s name on it died in the Senate like a houseplant left in the desert.

Harry Reid eventually said “enough” and changed the rules for cabinet posts and lower-level judges just so the government could function at something above “broken.” And Republicans responded with gasps so dramatic you’d think Reid had personally set fire to the Constitution. How dare Democrats adjust a Senate tradition, they cried — you know, that “tradition” that isn’t actually a rule, just a happy little custom senators used to stall civil rights bills. Sacred stuff!

Fast-forward to Obama’s second term. Antonin Scalia dies, and suddenly the Supreme Court has a vacancy. A real, actual constitutional process is supposed to happen here. But McConnell invents the “let the people decide” rule on the spot and blocks Obama’s nominee for 11 months — basically an entire pregnancy — because it was an election year. It was new, it was bold, it was completely made up.

But just wait: when RBG died during another election year, and Republicans controlled the Senate, that whole invented principle evaporated faster than a truth in a Trump speech. They shoved Amy Coney Barrett onto the bench so fast she probably still had packing peanuts in her shoes during confirmation.

Rules! Traditions! Procedures! They matter — unless there’s an R next to your name, in which case you can bend them, stretch them, or snap them in half like a breadstick.

Which brings us to today’s Speaker, Mike Johnson, the spiritual successor to the McConnell Philosophy of Governance: Rules are optional, power is mandatory. When Democrat Adelita Grijalva won her seat, Johnson left her in political limbo for over 50 days before swearing her in. Fifty. Days. During which she couldn’t sign on to push for release of the Epstein list — a total coincidence, surely. His excuses ranged from “government shutdown” to the classic “I just don’t feel like it,” but Tennessee’s Republican winner? Oh, he was sworn in faster than you can say consistent application of norms is for suckers.

Apparently, in today’s GOP, due process is like a dinner reservation: only honored if you’re already on the guest list.

So yes, Democrats keep showing up with their laminated rulebooks and their wide-eyed belief that norms will protect the country. Meanwhile, Republicans are in the corner building a political Rube Goldberg machine out of broken norms, “McConnell rules,” and whatever imaginary precedent they can conjure on a slow Tuesday.

Because in Washington these days, the only rule that truly matters is this:

Rules count only when they can be used against Democrats.

Everything else is optional — or as McConnell’s Hypocrite Oath implies,

“Principles are for people who don’t want power.”