❝News of Justice Antonin Scalia’s death is just beginning to reverberate across the political world this evening, as the 79-year-old’s passing at a West Texas resort on Saturday was confirmed a short time ago…
Doing away with any attempt to appear even remotely respectful and seizing upon the obvious political earthquake that is the passing of the Supreme Court’s most conservative justice in the final year of President Obama’s presidency, Ted Cruz got nakedly political in his reaction to Scalia’s death, tweeting that Americans “owe it” to Scalia and ourselves to block Obama from nominating a successor…
❝Even Donald Trump showed more tact when reacting to Scalia’s death…But Marco Rubio repeated Cruz’s crock that the people deserve a voice in naming Scalia’s replacement via the 2016 election while dismissing the results of the 2012 election.
❝Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who once argued in favor of a president’s prerogative to nominate justices who share his ideology but has since vigorously opposed Obama’s federal judicial nominees — refusing to hold confirmation hearings for a historic amount of nominees, released a statement emphasizing his political take on Scalia’s death and demanding that “this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President”
The Party of NO now has an opportunity to double down on their fear of Constitutional democracy. Not only can they prevent useful legislation from getting through Congress, they can shut down the Supreme Court by refusing to confirm whoever President Obama nominates.
Rightwing talking heads recognize the risk they’re setting themselves up for. The SCOTUS has been dominated by Republican appointees for over 40 years. That’s not good enough for today’s piss-ant Republicans. Instead of weighing in on a likely centrist candidate they are willing to chance a pissed-off electorate not only voting a Democrat into the White House but taking control of the Senate away from conservatives.
If President Obama has the smarts, the cojones to confront Republicans on their intransigence, he will nominate a Center-Left constitutional champion a few weeks after Scalia is buried. Regardless of the ignorance of CNN, the record for the longest confirmation for a justice is not held by Clarence Thomas but someone whose ethnicity and politics made Republicans more furious than Democrats stewing over an ultra-conservative Uncle Tom. That record goes to a Wall Street sheriff and trust-buster who was a Jew, Louis Brandeis. His confirmation took 125 days.
And Obama will be around a couple hundred days longer than that.
Let’s hear that “NO”