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Imagine if when news of Justice Antonin Scalia’s death broke on Saturday Senate Republicans simply said, “We look forward to working with President Obama once he makes a nomination.”
Republicans could at least maintain the pretense that they were working through the constitutional process. Then, after months of hearings and delays, they could say they couldn’t come to an agreement despite their “best intentions.”
Instead, within hours of the news, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) pledged that Republicans would not act on any nomination made by this president. The Republican presidential candidates were only too happy to amplify his pledge.
While this position certainly makes sense on ideological grounds, it was terrible politics and could backfire.
Steve Benen explains:
GOP senators could have been smart about this. They could have thought about this in a tactical and strategic way, preparing themselves for the months ahead. But as is too common, congressional Republicans just couldn’t help themselves.
Their Pavlovian instincts – Obama must be resisted, fiercely and publicly, at all times, even when it doesn’t make sense – have created the conditions for an unsettling test of our system’s legitimacy. For reasons they’ll struggle to explain, Republicans are eagerly boasting about their intention to fail this test.
There’s not much Democrats can do to force the GOP-controlled Senate to even hold a hearing. The only leverage they have is through public pressure.
It’s possible Republicans could reverse course and consider a nominee. They could slow walk the vetting process while hammering the nominee for a variety of unspeakable sins. But they’ve already shown their cards to the American people.
They’ve also raised the stakes considerably. If Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders wins the presidential election and Democrats retake the Senate, the next president will have won a mandate to pick the most liberal justice imaginable.
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