How much time elapsed between news of Justice Scalia's sudden death and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's Facebook message stating that no way, no how would anyone nominated by President Obama replace Scalia on the Supreme Court? I think it was right around one hour. I don't know what took McConnell so long: before his Facebook page was updated, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, preparing to spend an evening chanting liar-liar-pants-on-fire with their sidekicks in South Carolina, had tweeted the same message.
McConnell's message said:
The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President.
That's an odd way of putting it. Didn't the American people "have a voice" when in 2012 they elected Obama to a 4-year term that still has eleven months to run? On Face the Nation this morning, Rubio said that a "lame duck" president should not make a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. I wish John Dickerson had pressed him on that. By Rubio's private definition, Obama has been a "lame duck" since January, 2013. I doubt he thinks the Court should have a vacant seat for four years, but when exactly is the cutoff? Had Scalia died a week ago, could Obama fill the vacancy? I suspect not. Last month? On New Year's Eve? On what date did he lose the constitutional authority to make appointments to the Supreme Court?
Obama will nominate someone. Since there are 54 Republicans in the Senate, they can shelve the nomination and hope one of the clowns on stage last night in South Carolina is the next president. It's a strategy, however, that makes it quite a bit less likely that the next president will be a Republican. These kind of shady, partisan maneuverings are precisely what people hate. Being perceived as relatively untainted by the stench of them is probably the main reason "outsiders" have been doing so well. It's also true that a big fight over the next Supreme Court nomination helps the Dems, whose chances of winning rise with voter turnout. Republicans should worry about their Senate majority as well. Of the 34 Senate seats that will be filled by an election this November, 24 are currently held by Republicans, and six of those are in states that Obama carried twice.
Scalia's death put Republicans in a bad place and it seems to me they are racing to make it worse. To avoid getting one more Elena Kagan type justice, they are going to boost the odds of getting Hillary Clinton in the White House, a Democratic majority in the Senate--and, delayed by a few months, an Elena Kagan type justice.
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