Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, at center, has led the Republicans of the Senate Judiciary Committee in their insistence that they will not vote on any Supreme Court Justice nominee put forward by President Obama. Photograph by J. Scott Applewhite / AP

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee think they have found a principled way to avoid appointing a new Supreme Court Justice until the next President is elected. On Tuesday, they wrote to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, “As we mourn the tragic loss of Justice Antonin Scalia, and celebrate his life’s work, the American people are presented with an exceedingly rare opportunity to decide, in a very real and concrete way, the direction the Court will take over the next generation. We believe The People should have this opportunity.”

This is an idea they delight in saying was articulated in June, 1992 by Joe Biden, who was then the chair of the Judiciary Committee. In a two-minute speech on the Senate floor, he proposed that it should not consider a nominee for the Court in “the full throes of an election year,” because “once the political season is underway” it would be unfair to the nominee and to the Senate as an institution. Biden was speaking about a hypothetical opening on the Supreme Court, and meant that any nomination and confirmation should happen in a lame-duck session after the election. But he was articulating the same principle: that judicial confirmation should not take place during an election season.

As if history makes that principle irrefutable, the Senate Republicans reported in their letter, “Not since 1932 has the Senate confirmed in a presidential election year a Supreme Court nominee to a vacancy arising in that year. And it is necessary to go even further back—to 1888—in order to find an election-year nominee who was nominated and confirmed under divided government, as we have now.”

The more important statistics, as the University of Chicago’s Geoffrey Stone said in a briefing for a group of Democratic Senators, are that, from 1790 to the present, of a hundred and twenty-nine nominees considered, the Senate has confirmed nine out of ten. Over the past sixty years, of the twenty-eight nominees considered, the Senate has also confirmed nine out of ten—including eight out of ten when the President and the majority of the Senate were from opposing parties, as they are now. As long as a nominee is qualified and moderate, Stone said, the Senate has confirmed the selection. His examples of moderates are John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O’Connor, and Stephen Breyer.

There is an obvious problem with the Judiciary Committee’s argument that the American people should have a voice in the selection, via their votes for the next President. The American people already had a voice when they reëlected President Obama in 2012, giving him a landslide mandate with sixty-two percent of the Electoral College. The President’s post on Scotusblog Wednesday was a crisp reminder that he is at his best when he is making this kind of choice. He wrote, “A sterling record. A deep respect for the judiciary’s role. An understanding of the way the world really works. That’s what I’m considering as I fulfill my constitutional duty to appoint a judge to our highest court.”

There are further contradictions in the idea that the American people should decide, “in a very real and concrete way,” the direction of the Supreme Court, which would seem to collapse the authority of the Court under the authority of the President. As the founders clearly intended and constitutionalists of both parties once celebrated, the Supreme Court is supposed to serve as the corrector and protector of the political branches from a co-equal position of independence. It is also supposed to operate with a full bench. That’s why, unequivocally, the Constitution says that the President **“**shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint . . . Judges of the supreme court,” with no exception about timing.

Some have argued, persuasively, that the underlying message of the Senate leaders’ claims is that President Obama is not up to choosing the next Supreme Court Justice. As William Yeomans wrote for Reuters, “Suggesting that it would be inappropriate for him to nominate a justice was in line with the birther movement, the shout of ‘You lie’ during one of the president’s State of the Union addresses and McConnell’s announced strategy of opposing every Obama initiative to ensure he would be a one-term president.” Speaking at the Schomburg Center for Black Culture last week, Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton expressed similar sentiments, saying that Senate Republicans were treating Obama “as if somehow he’s not the real President.”

Every day that they delay in appointing a new Justice, Republican senators drag the Supreme Court further into the bog of politics. But they also create a situation where any senator who supports the delay and who is up for reëlection can be held accountable in November.

The first signature on the letter from the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee is that of its chairman, Charles Grassley of Iowa, who is up for reëlection. His seat is rated a safe one for the Republicans, but, as the Des Moines Register reported on Tuesday, “there are signs Democrats in Iowa and Washington will attempt to make Republicans’ refusal to vet a nominee an election-defining issue.”

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada defined the issue like this: “It appears that Senator Grassley’s going to follow through on this plan. He will go down in history as the most obstructionist Judiciary chair in the history of our country.” Senator Al Franken of Minnesota said, “If the Majority Leader believes that President Obama’s term should be cut short by eleven months, maybe he is suggesting that every senator in the sixth year of his term should not be able to vote or not be able to chair a committee.”

Grassley’s Senate seat is one of twenty-four held by Republicans that are up this year, out of thirty-four races. Five of the Republican seats are in blue states—and the Democrats need to gain five seats to re-take control of the Senate. Soon, Obama will announce his nominee and Democratic senators will start to meet with that person.

What Senate Republicans now insist is a principled reason not to consider the nominee is more likely to look like what this year’s Presidential primary voters are reacting against so vehemently: political dysfunction. There seems to be a strong desire for a major house-cleaning. Grassley and other Republicans are giving their constituents an excellent reason to replace them.