President Barack Obama warned that Republican senators risk damaging the Supreme Court nomination process “beyond repair” if they continue to reject action on his nominee for the high court.

In an op-ed article published in a Houston newspaper, Obama claims the GOP action “betray(s) the vision of our founding.”

Baloney. And the president knows that.

In 2006, while in the Senate, Obama himself used a filibuster in a vain attempt to block a Republican president’s Supreme Court nomination. It did not work; Justice Samuel Alito eventually won a place on the court.

And Obama, who once was a professor of constitutional law, also knows – or should – that the nation’s founders were very careful in crafting the process by which high court justices are appointed. They gave the Senate wide latitude in blocking presidents’ nominees, simply to ensure no chief executive could abuse the process.

In terms of departing from the vision of our founding, Obama has done more than any president in recent history. His use of executive orders to bypass Congress has been breathtaking in its audacity and sweep.

Obama is not the only doom-and-gloom critic of Republican senators, of course. Lawmakers in his own party also are insisting that what the GOP is doing may bring on a constitutional crisis.

That ignores the fact Democratic senators -and Vice President Joe Biden when he was a senator – have pulled out all the stops to block Republican nominees in the past.

The nation’s founders envisioned – even encouraged – vigorous confrontations such as the one occurring just now. Far from truth-telling about constitutional government, the president is engaging in hypocritical politics.