Republican senators now face a dilemma similar to that faced by their Democratic predecessors at about this time in 1988, the final year of President Ronald Reagan’s second term: Do you confirm the nomination of a Supreme Court justice whose jurisprudence you generally disagree with, or do you block the nomination and run the risk that the next president will choose someone with whom you strongly disagree? It may seem that this question has already been answered clearly by Republican leaders. Within hours of the vacancy on the Court occurring, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said, “the vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.” In a Tuesday meeting in the Oval Office he and other Republican leaders affirmed that position, even after President Barack Obama offered to seriously consider any names McConnell and Judiciary Committee Chair Charles Grassley suggested. What’s changed since that meeting is what happened on Tuesday night—namely, the seven-state sweep of primaries that made Donald Trump the likely Republican nominee for president and Hillary Clinton the near certain nominee of the Democratic Party.
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