Ths is all going to be very interesting, and not good at all for Republicans.
The GOP is going to be excoriated for months for denying a sitting president a chance to place his nominee to the Supreme Court, especially when that nominee will likely be a highly qualified minority. The media outcry will be unprecedented and relentless in large part because what the Senate Republicans propose - denying a nominee until the next presidential term - is unprecedented.
Think about it - if the current Republican Senate refuses to seat a nominee, the vacancy will effectively be TWO YEARS! The next president conceivably could nominate on January 21, 2017, but that nominee would likely not hear any cases until the fall of 2017.
The outcry over this is going to make the prospect of a Republican presidential victory even more remote than it already is. And even if a Republican won the White House, the odds are he will have a Democratic Senate to work with. Can you imagine the odds of any conservative judicial nominee being confirmed (for any court) under such a scenario?
The GOPe Senate is going to fold and confirm President Obama’s supreme court nominee in the end anyway. The only question is how much damage are they going to inflict upon themselves among the general public by refusing to confirm, then by betraying conservatism by folding.
Again, this will be very interesting and likely absolutely disastrous for the GOP.
I heard about Scalia’s death and was disturbed. I was disturbed because I liked him and depended on him. All that stuff Rush Limbaugh says about how you can depend entirely on Cruz? Well, it is not true, based on a little thing called his vote, but it was entirely true with Scalia.
It is also disturbing because now we have to depend on the Republican Senate to fight Obama on this. How has that turned out in the past?
Once the balance has shifted in the SC, I fully expect RBG to finally ride off into the sunset, so Obama will be able to add another, albeit much younger, justice as well.