As I noted in my post below, immediately after hearing of Justice Scalia’s death, I had doubts that Republicans could resist the urge from their party’s extremists to refuse to vote on a Supreme Court nomination this year. As we’ve seen from threatened debt defaults, routine government shutdowns and even the cooked up impeachment of a President going on two decades ago, there simply isn’t any institutionalist juice left in the GOP to resist yet another norm-violating power grab. And the truth is they’ve paid no price for the various other examples. Indeed, it is a sign of how far we’ve come that even mainstream Court watchers like SCOTUSBlog treated it as a given that Senate Republicans would take this course.
Right out of the gate, conservatives were insisting that Republicans not allow President Obama to nominate another Justice to the High Court. And just moments ago, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced that he would not allows such a vote to be held. So, in essence, this debate over whether to keep this seat vacant for likely as long as a year and a half lasted about an hour.
