The end of a judicial giant summoned an opportunity for Governor Phil Murphy to indulge his favorite

past time: swatting at a person he sees as her polar opposite, a midget of history and a widget of nefarious ideological forces.

Thus did the news of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s death prompt Murphy at his COVID-19 press conference today to kickstart anew his routine savaging of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the Republican from Kentucky and cloakroom safe stand-in for rage that otherwise might be directed at President Donald J. Trump but for lines of executive communication kept open in the coronavirus pandemic.

The Democratic governor alluded as a general matter to careened national politics. Then he zeroed in on what he identified as “rank hypocrisy” in the Republican ranks of the United States Senate.

“They want to ram a nominee six weeks ahead of an election,” Murphy said, in reference to the dynamics of a Justice Ginsberg successor. “Four years ago they refused to give a hearing to a nominee whose name was put forward eight months [before the election].

“‘Let the people decide,’ they screamed,” recalled the governor, singling McConnell out by name. “Today, they’re thumbing their noses at the people in the name of a narrow political ideology. How many will stand up and show guts? Can four of these people channel the likes of [the late Arizona Senator] John McCain?”

Throughout the COVID-19 crisis, Murphy has browbeaten McConnell.

Today, the New Jersey governor decried a “blatant power grab to undo decades of civil rights progress and deny women the right to make their own medical decisions.”

“Attention should be focused on getting ahead of COVID-19,” Murphy said. “We cannot be distracted from that goal. …There would be no lack of Americans who would concur with that opinion.”