After Scalia Dies, It’s Hardball Politics As Usual

This story was originally published on nationaljournal.com on Feb. 14, 2016 This past week­end, we saw a mi­cro­cosm of much of what is wrong in Amer­ic­an polit­ics. About an hour after it was con­firmed that Su­preme Court Justice Ant­on­in Scalia had died, Sen­ate Ma­jor­ity Lead­er Mitch Mc­Con­nell pro­nounced, “this va­cancy should not be filled un­til we have a new pres­id­ent.” Only minutes later, Pres­id­ent Obama, on a golf­ing va­ca­tion in Ran­cho Mirage, Cali­for­nia, said that he would move ahead with a nom­in­a­tion “in due time.” Less than 12 hours after Scalia was found dead of nat­ur­al causes, the Demo­crat­ic Na­tion­al Com­mit­tee was out with a fun­drais­ing-so­li­cit­a­tion email. What class. A ven­er­able jur­ist was barely dead, and the fight over his re­place­ment had already be­gun. Demo­crats were out­raged at Mc­Con­nell’s sug­ges­tion that the Sen­ate would not take up a nom­in­a­tion. But when my Demo­crat­ic friends were asked, if the cir­cum­stances were re­versed, wheth­er Harry Re­id would al­low a Re­pub­lic­an pres­id­ent in his last year in of­fice to put a new mem­ber on the high court, I heard a lot of sput­ter­ing.