Back on February 15th, I told you that the Republicans would never confirm a replacement for Antonin Scalia. This wasn’t rocket science, but it wasn’t common wisdom at the time.
Eight days later, the Republican leadership in the Senate has confirmed that they won’t even consider any nominee from President Obama. They won’t meet with any nominee. They won’t have any hearing for a nominee in the Judiciary Committee. They won’t have a floor vote. Nothing.
Absolutely no one will be acceptable to them. The president could nominate the 83 year old elder statesman George Mitchell and they won’t give the courtesy of having lunch with him. The president can nominate the popular Republican governor of Nevada, Brian Sandoval, and they won’t give him a hearing. The president can pick Senator Amy Klobuchar who sits on the Judiciary Committee and her colleagues will give her the cold shoulder.
Obviously, any of those picks would make this unreasonable stance by the Republicans a lot more uncomfortable for them, but they don’t care.
The Democrats will not convince them that this is a political liability because they believe, probably correctly, that their base will be utterly demoralized if a pro-choice Justice replaces Scalia before the November elections.
If they hold out and win the presidency in November, they will be able to overturn Roe v. Wade in two easy steps.
First, they’ll replace Scalia with an anti-choice Justice. Then they’ll convince Justice Kennedy to retire and replace him with an anti-choice Justice. With Roberts, Alito, Thomas, and these two new Justices, they’ll have the five votes that have eluded them since Souter and Kennedy turned out to be traitors to the cause.
They’re so close now that they cannot give up.
So, they won’t.
