By James Oliphant and Ginger Gibson WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The sudden and shocking death of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia opened a new and incendiary front in the already red-hot 2016 presidential race, one that promises to divide Democrats and Republicans and, perhaps, Republicans from themselves. The vacancy on the court, which is now evenly…
The senate will not allow Obama to have a third Supreme Court appointment and there’s nothing he or any other Democrat can do about it.
Too bad, so sad.
The only way that any Democratic president, including Bernie or Hillary, will get this or future vacancies filled is by us changing the makeup of the Senate.
Vote the Republican senators out of office and vote Democrats in.
We can start with Toomey of Penn.
If the Senate remains Republican then we may end up with less then six justices by 2020. (Which wouldn’t be an altogether bad outcome.)
If Scalia was “right-leaning”, then Barry Goldwater was a centrist, and Rush Limbaugh is a constitutional conservative.
No matter what milquetoast, DLC, Federalist Society ball-gargling, wannabe Republican that Obama nominates, they’ll still be characterized as to the left of Trotsky.
We are at that partisan point where the filibuster in the Senate as a tactic against the nominee of the other party is going to get “nuked”. Going forward, the formula for Supreme Court appointment will be President plus a simple majority of the Senate. We are about to see the Supreme Court reduced to the zombie condition of the late Strom Thurmond. Longevity will determine majority until one party or the other gets stars to align.