Isn’t it time Jack McConnell gets a Senate vote?

All you need to know about the dysfunctional culture of  political Washington, D.C. these days is the way the U.S. Senate has treated the nomination of Providence lawyer Jack McConnell for a seat on the federal District Court bench.

While the backlog of cases mushrooms, McConnell waits and waits for a vote in the Senate. His nomination has been stalled for more than a year for no apparent reason other than that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce doesn’t like the fact that he has made a living suing businesses, such as tobacco companies, that harm the public.

McConnell has been approved on a bipartisan vote of the Senate Judiciary Committee several times. He has support from Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and all of the committee Democrats.

But Republicans keep using filibusters and threats of filibusters to delay an up-or-down vote on McConnell. Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, backs McConnell’s right to a clean vote.

“Among the highly qualified candidates being stalled is Jack McConnell,’’ said Leahy in a statement. “ He has the strong support of his home state senators, (Sens. Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse) bipartisan support from those in his home state, and his nomination has been reported favorably by a bipartisan majority of the Judiciary Committee several times.’’

Says Leahy, “`From the start of President Obama’s term, Republican senators have applied a heightened and unfair standard to President Obama’s district court nominees. This is a kind of scrutiny that has never before been applied to the district court nominees of any president, Republican or Democratic.’’

McConnell, a Brown University graduate, is known as one of Rhode Island’s top trial lawyers and a community leader in philanthropy and good works. He has also been a leading Democratic Party fund-raiser.

The opposition to McConnell is being led in the Senate by Republican Sen. John Cornyn of  Texas. The interesting trope here is that even a home state newspaper, the San Antonio Express-News, recently hammered Cornyn for hypocrisy in the McConnell nomination. The newspaper, in an editorial, noted that in 2004, when Republican George W. Bush was president, Cornyn said that the Constitution “demands’’ an “up-or-down vote when it comes to the confirmation of  the president’s judicial nominees.’’

Of course, now that the shoe is on the other foot, Cornyn is holding up a nomination of a Democratic president. The Constitution obviously hasn’t changed since 2004.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, speaking of McConnell, said, “This is a very good man. Morally his record is impeccable. As a lawyer, he is certaintly one of the two of three best lawyers in the state of Rhode Island.’’

At any rate, McConnell is owed a vote so that he at least he and his family can plan a future. Leaving him in limbo seems   little more than a political gridlock trick. If  senators want to vote against him that is their right. But they ought to do it in the light of day on a public roll-call, rather than try to stall him with more backroom maneuvers.