The fierce political battle over filling Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat is not the first of its kind but does continue a recent trend. Certainly, nominating and confirming a Supreme Court justice would have lower stakes and the politics would be altogether less volatile if liberals and conservatives didn’t have such competing visions of the Constitution.

Republicans have talked a lot about the Senate’s constitutional duty to confirm a new justice, a duty it certainly has. It is, however, impossible to interpret Republicans’ commitment to putting on pause a critical stimulus effort, and to weathering some legitimate charges of hypocrisy in the final weeks of an election season, without understanding the basic ideological fight.