Putting aside the conflict between my humanitarian feelings and how I felt about Scalia’s rulings, from a political standpoint this is absolutely huge and maybe yet another crazy twist to a truly crazy election year.
Or is it?
Isn’t President Obama entitled and duty bound to appoint a replacement well within the remaining year of his tenure?
Tell that to Justices Miers and Bork.
For a year? I think that would be a horrible mistake for the Republican Senate, even though two of them are still in the Presidential race. Perhaps they could drag it out by voting down a nominee or two, but to spend a year refusing to vote on a nomination for the Supreme Court would be seen by almost all as simply ridiculous.
The vote doesn’t count until the case is decided. So we may well see different outcomes than anticipated in a whole range of cases.
That’s two in twenty years. Everyone got their other nominations through.
And I don’t know that Obama is required to nominate someone in a timely manner. But he’d be a fool not to do so. They want to obstruct? Let them obstruct and be obvious about it.
The responses on Free Republic are rich.
Before the start of the primaries there were doubts about Trump or Cruz not becoming the Republican nominee, now I do think that it is likely that one of them will be. Knowing the quality of people Trump is choosing to kowtow in this election, points to where I do think Trump will get his judges.
But do you really think that, as much as the Right has tried to tie Obama to all of the current problems we have, they’re going to even attempt to find some middle ground candidate?
Assuming that Obama is unable to appoint someone, would the candidates begin looking for an appointee in waiting? Would it better for the candidates to name a specific person rather than just saying “I’ll look into a nominee for the court after I get elected?” I could see that becoming a huge mess. I also think it would be an advantage for the Democrats.
Bork was deeply flawed and Miers was unqualified. Many candidates aren’t that obviously partisan until they reveal their true colors during their tenure. They just need to have most of the right answers during the confirmation grillings. Holy crap this is huge!
The Republicans are trying to hold on to the Senate, and most of the seats coming up this cycle are for Republican incumbents. If those senators up for reelection obstruct the nominee, I think that would be a huge negative against them, at least for those Republican senators running in blue and purple states.
I like this one:
Maybe, but I suspect that the right could spin it as The Senate Bravely Defending The Nation Against The Kenyan Muslim Usurper’s attempt to Undermine Our Liberties with a nominee who would be Satan’s Minion.
In other words, we might see campaigns (for GOP Senate races) touting any obstruction efforts as being courageous and admirable.
Everyone thought Miers was a terrible choice. She never got her nomination off the ground before bowing out because there was bipartisan “WTF?” to the idea.
Yeah, I tend to agree. Obama might have to moderate his choice a bit, but I don’t see us going into 2017 with an eight member court.
What I find interesting is how the candidates, especially Republican, will answer the inevitable questions of, “will you nominate someone who will do X?” I know they’ve already been asked, but people may pay even more attention to the answers now.
One shudders to think who or what Trump would appoint.
Nominate Sanders! 
It would be proper for Obama to nominate a candidate and have them go through a legitimate confirmation hearing but I’m going to be surprised if it happens.
Wait until Obama nominates Sanders for the position.
It’s eleven months until Obama leaves office. Has any Supreme Court vacancy lasted eleven months since the Civil War? I couldn’t find any in a quick search. I don’t think there is a possibility of it happening now. Obama will nominate a liberal (probably a person of color) and there will be a battle, but it will be next to impossible to deny the nomination if it a person as supremely [sic] qualified as I assume will happen.
Look forward to one million comments about imagining Trump nominating a Supreme Court Justice. Some of them in actual ads.
Double ninja!
It’ll be quite interesting to see how this affects vulnerable Senators such as Mark Kirk here in Illinois. He’s fighting for his political life and I doubt he wants to be part of an 11 month long obstruction.
That would be cool. (He’d be the only Justice never to have attended law school, or at least had the sort of training lawyers had back in the nineteenth century.)