Tuesday Open Thread [2.16.16]

NATIONAL—NBC/Survey Monkey–Clinton 50, Sanders 40
NATIONAL—NBC/Survey Monkey–Trump 38, Cruz 18, Rubio 14, Carson 8, Kasich 7, Bush 4
SOUTH CAROLINA—PPP–Clinton 55, Sanders 34
SOUTH CAROLINA—Gravis–Clinton 59, Sanders 41
SOUTH CAROLINA—PPP–Trump 35, Cruz 18, Rubio 18, Kasich 10, Bush 7, Carson 7
SOUTH CAROLINA—Gravis–Trump 37, Cruz 23, Rubio 19, Kasich 6, Bush 9, Carson 6
SOUTH CAROLINA—SC House GOP–Trump 33, Cruz 14, Rubio 14, Kasich 10, Bush 13, Carson 6

The Dallas Morning News:

Yes, it’s uncommon for vacancies to occur in an election year. But when they have, no president of either party has sat on his responsibility and refused to nominate a successor. Nor has the Senate ever simply refused to even consider a nomination with so many months to go before the next election. […]

The far wiser, and only responsible, course is to for Senators to hold their hearings, study Obama’s choice and then all members, liberal or conservative, cast a vote they can defend.

The Des Moines Register:

If Senate Republicans truly will be guided by precedent, they should make plans to vote on President Obama’s nominee and not discuss stalling tactics and filibusters, which seems to be the plan that’s now taking shape.

What makes the Republicans’ effort all the more galling is that it flies in the face of their oft-professed, unwavering allegiance to the Constitution, a document that says the president “shall nominate,” with the “advice and consent of the Senate,” our Supreme Court justices. It doesn’t say anything at all about these duties and obligations being suspended a year or so before each president is scheduled to leave office.

The GOP effort to block an Obama nominee from the court isn’t about letting voters have their say, or respecting past precedent, or demonstrating strict adherence to the Constitution. In fact, it’s precisely the opposite.

Rick Klein: “Justice Scalia’s death sets up an extraordinary, even unprecedented moment for a dysfunctional federal government. A constitutional crisis – starting with a selection process and continuing through an all-but-certain congressional slow-walk to a possible filibuster – will unfurl against the backdrop of a election cycle that will determine the future of all three branches of government. It raises the stakes for the race; the senators on the GOP side joined those calling on President Obama not to make a pick, and Hillary Clinton added a decrying of those Senate vows to her stump.”

“It will be easy enough to lampoon or urge on a broken Washington system over these next few months. The fight over Scalia’s replacement will no doubt galvanize the parties’ respective activist bases. But a wearying fight – with its utterly predictable outcome – won’t necessarily reward the loudest candidate. Given the likeliest of an ugly ride, voters might look to someone who can get things back on course.”

Chris Cillizza at The Washington Post, who calls the move an “unforced error”:

Saying publicly — and on the same day that Scalia died — that replacing the justice was a non-starter, Senate Republicans sent a clear message to the American voters: We aren’t even going to make a show of playing ball on this one. […] With McConnell’s statement on Saturday night, the chance for Republicans to “win” on the court nomination becomes remote. Refusing to even take part in the process — even though that process could have easily yielded the GOP’s desired result — hands Obama and Senate Democrats a political cudgel to bash the GOP.

It’s an unforced error by Senate Republicans that will be difficult to mop up. And one that could cost them at the ballot box in November.

Taegan Goddard says the Republicans badly misfired:

Imagine if when news of Justice Antonin Scalia’s death broke on Saturday Senate Republicans simply said, “We look forward to working with President Obama once he makes a nomination.”

Republicans could at least maintain the pretense that they were working through the constitutional process. Then, after months of hearings and delays, they could say they couldn’t come to an agreement despite their “best intentions.”

Instead, within hours of the news, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) pledged that Republicans would not act on any nomination made by this president. The Republican presidential candidates were only too happy to amplify his pledge.

While this position certainly makes sense on ideological grounds, it was terrible politics and could backfire.

Steve Benen:

GOP senators could have been smart about this. They could have thought about this in a tactical and strategic way, preparing themselves for the months ahead. But as is too common, congressional Republicans just couldn’t help themselves.

Their Pavlovian instincts – Obama must be resisted, fiercely and publicly, at all times, even when it doesn’t make sense – have created the conditions for an unsettling test of our system’s legitimacy. For reasons they’ll struggle to explain, Republicans are eagerly boasting about their intention to fail this test.

Jonathan Chait on how Michael Bloomberg could win: “One reason Bloomberg’s presidential ambitions have always been so comically detached from reality is that he fills a space on the political spectrum that is overserved (socially liberal, fiscally conservative) whereas the actual unmet political demand is just the opposite (socially conservative, fiscally liberal). Democrats keep nominating social liberals whose secret heresy is a willingness to cut deals that trim spending on Social Security and Medicare. Republicans nominate fanatic tax-cutters for the percent who want to deregulate Wall Street. Both parties’ elites agree on free trade and more liberal immigration. Bloomberg has always wanted to enter what is an oversaturated market for views congenial to the elite.”

“But if Trump and Sanders win their nominations, then the opposite would suddenly hold true. Instead of the socially liberal–fiscally conservative set having too much representation, it would suddenly have too little. A candidate who is neither a socialist nor a racist would have a large niche.”

Politico on the campaigns secretly preparing for a contested convention: “Mysterious outside groups are asking state parties for personal data on potential delegates, Republican campaigns are drawing up plans to send loyal representatives to obscure local conventions, and party officials are dusting off rulebooks to brush up on a process that hasn’t mattered for decades.”

“As Donald Trump and Ted Cruz divide up the first primaries and center-right Republicans tear one another apart in a race to be the mainstream alternative, Republicans are waging a shadow primary for control of delegates in anticipation of what one senior party official called “the white whale of politics”: a contested national convention.”

Ryan Lizza: “Ted Cruz is the best political tactician in the Republican race. But for all of Cruz’s tactical successes so far, he made one enormous mistake: he misunderstood the threat posed by Trump. By repeatedly praising Trump throughout 2015, Cruz did more than any other Republican to validate the reality-TV star as a true conservative.”

“Cruz, the most well-funded conservative, stuck to his hug-Trump strategy until just a few days before the Iowa caucuses. At the CBS debate, [he] tried desperately to undo that damage, and his attempt to unmask Trump as a closet liberal led to the most fiery exchange of the evening. And now there is a new accelerant to the Cruz–Bush campaign to turn Trump into a liberal: Antonin Scalia’s death. For many ideological conservatives, the makeup of the Supreme Court is the most important issue in America … [and] the success of Cruz’s campaign may depend on that fight.”

Rick Hasen: “Think of the Scalia battle not as a hurricane, but as the first in a series of storms that will come through our increasingly polarized Congress. And with all the liberals on the Court now appointed by Democratic presidents, and all the conservatives on the Court now appointed by Republican presidents, we can expect the nominations process to be much more partisan and polarized than it has been in the past. The series of storms will put great stress on our system of separation of powers when we are so divided.”

“It is true that key questions that are among the most important to our nation are in the hands of 9 unelected justices, and that Scalia’s replacement will be significant. But no matter who gets to replace Scalia, there will be more opportunities to fight for control of the Court in the years to come.”

Spandan Chakrabarti on why Obama wants a Supreme Court Fight and how Republicans blew it before it starts:

The bigger part of the advantage that the President and Democrats have is the actual fight over the nomination and confirmation process.

Say the President nominates someone like Sri Srinivasan, who was confirmed to the DC Circuit by a 97-0 vote of the Senate in 2013. Among those 97 Yea votes were those of Sens. Cruz and Rubio, as well as GOP Leader McConnell, all calling for the current President to abdicate his Constitutional responsibility. What will people who have already voted for a judge to be on the federal bench say as a reason to oppose the same judge that won’t sound political and hollow?

The funny part is that the President doesn’t even have to nominate a consensus candidate like Srinivasan to paint the Republicans into a corner. Republicans have already helpfully handed the President all he needs to paint their opposition to his eventual nominee as political and not substantive with their incredibly shortsighted to demand right away that President Obama stay away from nominating a new Justice.

There is no way they can stop the president from exercising his Constitutional power, and because they have shown their hands early, the President and Harry Reid can easily frame any Republican attack against his inevitable nominee as spite rather than any serious concern on jurisprudence.

Once painted into a political corner, Republicans may well have to back down from their initial stand just to get out of that corner.

Harry Reid, I am certain, has other tricks up his sleeve to frustrate the Republican leadership by essentially ending the Senate’s business until the President’s nominee gets a vote. He could use executive sessions (the motion is non-debatable) to halt business, block unanimous consent requests for short breaks or recesses, and pull every parliamentary maneuver to make Republicans go on record. Even worse for the GOP, by constantly asking for procedural votes on the nomination, he can force Republicans to show up and be on the Senate floor.

And no Democratic Senator will pay a political price for standing with Reid and President Obama on this. It will be like the GOP’s government shutdown, part deux. Democrats will coalesce around the Constitutional principle of giving the president’s nominee a vote, and Republicans will be seen as the party of destruction, endangering the very operation of government itself. And this time, there won’t be a malfunctioning website to go after when it’s done.

The political cornering of Republicans will be especially important because this is an election year. The longer Republicans drag out this fight, the more it will galvanize an electorate favorable to the Democratic party.

Keith Boykin, former White House aide to President Clinton:

Mitch McConnell’s naked power grab, coming on the heels of a government shutdown, more than 60 failed attempts to repeal Obamacare, and numerous other manufactured crises, also helps refute the unsubstantiated media narrative that “both parties are to blame” for the gridlock in Washington. There’s no precedent in modern history for denying the duly elected president of the United States a hearing or a vote on a Supreme Court nomination. This level of obstruction exposes the G.O.P.’s pattern of intransigence and could push independents to the Democratic fold in the fall.

It’s a move Republicans will live to regret.