RIP Antonin Scalia

I'll say right off the bat that I don't know, but here's one theory:

Think of McConnell and other republicans like a basketball player in a contract year. He could continue being a good team player, or he could be a ball hog, try to get his own stats up, and hurt the team in the process.
Basically, the player's in a situation where what's best for him and what's best for the team aren't the same.
That might be where McConnell sees himself. What's best for him is getting reelected. What's best for Republicans is as conservative a court as possible. It's possible these goals are one in the same, but it's possible they're not. It's possible the individual calculus looks like: "If I vote to approve an Obama nominee, it will be used against me.
While if he obstructs, even if a more liberal judge gets appointed/confirmed by Clinton/Dem Senate, he might come out better, because he's never on the record supporting the Democratic president's nominee.

He might think "McConnell voted for the justice hand-picked by Obama. Tell Washington we don't want to rubber stamp bad Democratic deals." is an attack ad that basically writes itself.
While, "McConnell voted against every Democratic nominee, but in the end that hurt us more, because Trump lost his election and a bunch of other senators lost theirs and now we're stuck with an even worse situation" is a much harder attack ad to make stick.

 

Things may change once all of the primaries are locked in. Even the "safe" seats worry about a primary challenge. Once the general election match-ups are locked in, McConnell might wiggle a bit more. It doesn't appear that the Senate will be filibuster proof for either side next year in any event. But if I were a swing state Senator up for election and the "no hearings" stance was killing my chances, I'd be kind of ticked off.

 

I used to think it was politically stupid for the GOP to do this because it might hurt incumbent Senators. But even though early voting is more popular than it once was, the fact is that Nov. 8 is when almost all votes will be cast, and by then, the swearing in of the next POTUS and next Congress will be relatively close. Everybody will know that the days of an eight-member SCOTUS are dwindling. Now if elections were next week, it would be a problem because one poll says 59 percent of the country believes Garland's replacement should be confirmed.

 

The Senate election, in a nutshell:

There are 34 seats being contested in 2016. These were seats that Republicans dominated in the 2010 wave election. Therefore, Republicans are defending a large number of them: 24, as opposed to only 10 by Democrats.

Six of the seats are held by Republican incumbents in states that Obama carried in 2012, and 2 GOP seats are open in states that are more or less tossup (Florida and Indiana). All it takes is 5 seats to flip for Democrats to control the Senate (or 4 if the Dems hold the White House, since the VP votes to break ties).

It's possible McConnell is pulling his stunt because he knows the writing's on the wall, not in spite of it.

 

I think that the republicans dug themselves into a bit of a hole and I wonder if they back out now. I think they should confirm him despite the fact that his centrism is overrated. He's liberal and would deliver a bloc to the left, and I wouldn't expect any of them to play Kennedy / Roberts and surprise us. Still, he's qualified and well respected. The 63 year old piece is a conciliatory gesture as is the fact that he has the esteem of so many republicans. I know that president Obama didn't do that to be conciliatory- quite the opposite, to make them look bad. Which they do. So many mistakes. From now on, the response to every event (like Scalia's death, garlands nomination) should be / should have been "this is a monumental development that deserves our careful consideration. We will have a response as soon as is responsibly possible."
What I would have done is declare victory when he nominated garland and voted to confirm. Not that they don't have a right to play hardball. The death match, Michigan/OSU nature of the relationship has been fostered by both sides, and in this area, it was the democrats with Bork who changed the rules and ruined any possibility of compromise. I just think that they're unlikely to do better than a smart, responsible judge like garland.

 

Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kansas), who's up for re-election this year, proves he has an aptitude for politics by saying yesterday, "I'd rather have people tell me I voted wrong on a nomination than have people tell me I'm not doing my job."

 

No win situation:

 

I think everyone should take a deep breath at this point. The Republicans have already announced they will not let the process move forward. Garland will never even get to an up-or-down vote, which he would lose anyway.

Meantime, the GOP will need to own yet another in a long line of obstructionist maneuvers that have become its standard operating procedure throughout the Obama presidency.

They will pay for it over the coming months in the form of some 4-4 votes and at election time. In the end, HRC will choose he next SC justice. I'm fine with that.

 

Who is really driving the stall on Judge Garland? The NRA.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/24/opinion/the-senate-defers-to-the-nra.html

 

The guy even said he probably wasn't going to vote for Garland; that he just wanted to hold the hearings and vote. The TPers don't even want him to do that.

 

It would maybe be ironic if Wayne LaPierre was shot dead with an assault rifle.

I own rifles and I hunt, but the NRA leadership is fucking nuts. And Mitch McConnell ...

 

Meanwhile, a 4-4 tie turns a certain loss into a victory for public sector labor unions.

Supreme Court's tie vote upholds public employee fees for unions