With two or even three more potential vacancies opening up on the Court during the next president’s term, 2016 may be the most important presidential election of our lifetime. And Senator John McCain (R-AZ) just made it clear that the GOP has no intention of ending its unprecedented obstruction of SCOTUS.
Earlier this year, almost immediately after news of Justice Antonin Scalia’s death broke February 13, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) proclaimed that “this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President.”
However, in a Monday interview with a Philadelphia radio host, Sen. McCain declare that Republicans will continue to block anyone the next president nominates to the Supreme Court — at least if that president is Hillary Clinton.
“I promise you that we will be united against any Supreme Court nominee that Hillary Clinton, if she were president, would put up,” the Arizona senator told host Dom Giordano
Senator John McCain (R-AZ) | Imgur
“The strongest argument I can make” for why Pennsylvania voters should re-elect Republican Sen. Pat Toomey, is that a Republican Senate can “ensure that there is not three places on the United States Supreme Court that will change this country for decades,” McCain said before adding: “this is why we need the majority.”
What McCain is proposing is nothing less than an existential threat to the Supreme Court itself if only Republicans should be allowed to choose Supreme Court justices.
Listen:
Just imagine a world where Scalia’s seat — and two others — remain vacant for five years because a Republican Senate refuses to confirm anyone named by the president.
Then imagine that all three of these seats are filled five or nine or thirteen years from today because a Republican Senate refuses to confirm anyone named by the president.
McCain is irresponsbily plotting a very dark future if the GOP keep their Senate majority. He is threatening to intentionally trigger a constitutional crisis by stripping SCOTUS of its legitimate authority to ensure that elected officials respect the rule of law and the rights enshrined in the Constitution.
