Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell and the Republican Party play victims. Don't let them.

Few would disagree with the contention that Washington has reached new heights of dysfunction in recent years. It’s tempting to blame “both sides” for this problem, but it would be inaccurate. It’s true that as individuals, we all need to look at how we can help turn the heat down around politics, especially as they interfere with family and friend relationships at a much higher rate than in the past. It’s also true that politicians in both the Democratic and Republican Parties can be raging hypocrites, so much so that it barely shocks us anymore.

Nonetheless, it’s not correct that the Democratic Party and the Republican Party as institutions are contributing to the problems this country faces in equal measure.

Republicans' style of warfare

What the Republicans are doing, and have been doing for some time, is asymmetrical warfare.

This issue was brought into clear focus late last week when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that President Donald Trump’s nominee to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would get a vote in the Senate.

This, despite McConnell’s norm-busting move to block President Barack Obama’s nominee to fill the vacancy created by the passing of Ginsburg’s colleague and friend Antonin Scalia in 2016.

At the time, McConnell invented a story about how it would be wrong to confirm a Supreme Court justice in an election year — even though the vacancy was created nine months before the election — because it would be unfair to the nominee and the American people. The American people need to have a voice, he said.

The American people had already had a voice. They elected Obama twice. No matter. McConnell knew the story was a farce, so why get bogged down in details?

But the video exists, and so now McConnell and his enablers say it was different because the Senate majority was the opposite party of the White House. This is as meaningful as saying it’s different because the senators were all wearing blue shirts and now they aren’t. Which is to say, it has no meaning or bearing on the situation. Supreme Court nominees get confirmed in these situations, and the Republicans know that. Clarence Thomas, William Rehnquist, Anthony Kennedy and Lewis Powell were all nominated by Republican presidents and confirmed in a Senate with a Democratic majority.

But they keep trying to come up with reasons to justify their behavior, forgetting that people have memories and, in lieu of that, Google. The Washington Post’s Bob Costa tweeted late Friday that his sources were telling him, “There are discussions within the Senate GOP about voting *before* the election, making the argument that 9 justices are needed in case of an election crisis.” Of course, McConnell’s refusal to take up Obama’s nominee for the court created the exact same scenario in 2016.

McConnell’s farcical act regarding the Scalia seat was replete with references to the so-called Biden rule, which was held up, out of context, as sacrosanct and unquestionable. The “Biden rule” refers to a speech Biden made almost 30 years ago on the Senate floor. There was no Supreme Court vacancy then, and it was never put forth as a governing principle that Democrats, or anyone, lived by.

Republicans claim that Democrats started all this by blowing up Robert Bork’s 1987 Supreme Court nomination, or if you don’t buy that, by ending the filibuster in 2013. Both stories are nonsense.

Bork was too conservative for Democrats and never should have been nominated. His more moderate replacement, Anthony Kennedy, was approved unanimously by the Senate, which sort of ruins the story about Democrats refusing to confirm Republican SCOTUS nominees.

The filibuster was abolished by then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for most presidential nominations — except, notably, the Supreme Court — because the Republicans refused to let a Democratic president fill federal judicial seats. The entire GOP strategy from the moment Obama was elected was to oppose everything he did. The norm Republicans busted then was something that was previously understood by everyone: In order to get things done in Washington, you have to negotiate with the other party. As it turns out, getting rid of the filibuster is so heinous to Republicans that McConnell extended abolishing it for Supreme Court nominees.

Chaos: Ginsburg flap shows Supreme Court, justices are too important

Another claim we are hearing from Republicans — including Sen. Lindsey Graham, who swore that if a seat opened up in an election year under a Republican president, he would not support confirmation — is that now everything is different because of the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation process. This is nonsensical. Setting aside the fact that the real travesty of the Kavanaugh affair is how thoroughly uninterested Republicans were in doing a real investigation that might have shed some light on Christine Blasey Ford’s sexual assault allegation, their anger over how the nominee was treated does not give them a right to treat a vacant Supreme Court as an avenue to settle scores.

Stop romanticizing the Republicans

At this point, someone will say, “If this were the Democrats, you would be defending them.” No, I wouldn’t. I have a long record of criticizing Democrats, and if Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer had done what McConnell did, I wouldn’t have hesitated for a second to criticize it. Had McConnell observed the norms of the past in 2016, I would not have objected to Trump filling this opening, no matter how close it was to the election, if he could get the Senate to go along with it.

Part of the asymmetrical nature of the behavior of the Republicans is that no matter how outrageously they behave — whether refusing to work with a two-term Democratic president or making up bogus rules to take a Supreme Court seat — if Democrats respond in any way, the GOP goes straight into victim mode, acting like the Democratic response just came out of nowhere. Don’t fall for it. The Democrats have shown incredible restraint, due to their commitment to the institutions of this country — the same institutions that Trump has been firebombing for the past four years.

Comparing the Republican and Democratic Parties in a column recently, The New York Times’ David Brooks noted that the GOP is “a culture war identity movement that suppresses factional disagreement and demands total loyalty to Trump. The Democrats are still a normal political party.”

Who will take RBG's place?: Filling Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Supreme Court seat would be a disastrous Republican move

It’s time for people — in particular reporters — to stop romanticizing McConnell as a “master tactician” or as someone who “plays hardball.” His behavior is unethical and destructive. And it’s long overdue for political observers to stop engaging in both-sidesism when it comes to lamenting Washington’s slide into Machiavellian trench warfare.

Yes, winning matters to both parties. But as Trump, McConnell and their enablers have demonstrated, only the Republicans think rules, honesty and comity are for suckers.

Kirsten Powers, a CNN news analyst, is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors. Follow her on Twitter: @KirstenPowers

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell and Republican Party play victims