Gregory Korte

USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — President Obama argued Thursday that the Republican tactics that are denying his Supreme Court nominee a confirmation vote could lead Democrats to follow suit — making it all but impossible for judicial nominations of either party to get confirmed during divided government.

Obama's warning upped the ante in a high-stakes battle for the future of the narrowly divided court, arguing that the current fight to replace conservative Justice Antonin Scalia could turn into gridlock that "would be a disaster for the courts."

Speaking at the University of Chicago law school, Obama decried Republican attempts to blockade his nominee, Merrick Garland, until the 45th president is sworn in next year. Even if a Republican wins the White House and makes a nomination, he said, Democrats would filibuster it.

"The notion the Democrats would then say, 'Oh, well, we’ll just go along with that' — that is inconceivable, right?" Obama said. "So now the Democrats say, well, you know, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. We'll wait four more years, to see the next president who comes in."

And that, Obama said, would destroy the independence and integrity of the judicial branch. "People will, at that point, just become more and more cynical about decisions that are coming down from the court. They’re already cynical, because so many opinions just end up being straight 5-4, and it starts feeling like this is just a partisan alignment."

Obama took his campaign to confirm Garland, the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to the law school where he taught for 10 years before he was elected to the Senate. Answering questions from an audience consisting of 279 students, faculty, and judges, he also talked about a wide range of legal issues from criminal justice reform to drone strikes.

The event marked the most significant personal appeal by the president since he first announced Garland's nomination March 16. While in Chicago, Obama will also tape an interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News Sunday — suggesting that the White House is trying to persuade even the more conservative constituents of Republican senators that Garland deserves a hearing.

But Senate Republicans say they remain steadfast, with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.R-Ky., calling Obama's argument that the Constitution requires the Senate to consider any nominee is a "politically convenient fairy tale."

Filling the deciding seat on the Supreme Court "could impact our country for decades," McConnell said, and "could dramatically affect our most cherished Constitutional rights like those contained in the First and Second Amendments." He said claims that Garland is a moderate judge is "just a useful piece of spin that’s been dutifully echoed across the expanse of the Left and in the media for years."

Merrick Garland, John Roberts usually agreed on appeals court

In a rebuttal on the floor of the Senate Thursday, Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev, noted that the Constitution says the president "shall nominate" Supreme Court justices. "You can play around all you want with the Supreme Court and what the Constitution does or doesn't say," Reid said. "The Constitution is also very affirmative. There has to be advice and consent. I don't know how one 's reading the Constitution, but we need to do our job."

Obama blamed the overall polarization of American politics for the impasse over the Supreme Court, and acknowledged that Democrats were not blameless.

"If you talk to Republicans, they'll often point to the (Robert) Bork nomination as where this all started. And there have been times where Democrats used the filibuster to block what Republican presidents or conservative legal theorists viewed as eminently qualified jurists," he said, failing to acknowledge his role in threatening a filibuster of Justice Samuel Alito's 2006 nomination to the court.

But he said Republicans have escalated the back-and-forth beyond anything Democrats have done. "There has not been a circumstance in which a Republican president's appointee did not get a hearing, did not get a vote," he said.

Obama also gave new insight into his selection of Garland, saying he didn't feel a need to use the seat vacated by Justice Antonin Scalia's death to check off any particular demographic boxes. It was more important to make sure that talented candidates got a fair look, he said.

"At no point did I say, 'I want a black lesbian from Skokie in that slot. Can you find me one?' That's just not how I approached it," he said. "Yeah, he's a white guy, but he's a really outstanding jurist. Sorry."

Garland, who does hail from the Chicago suburb of Skokie, attended Harvard Law School and worked in the Justice Department as a prosecutor before President Clinton nominated him to the D.C. appeals court, often considered the second-highest court in the country.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday that the Fox News interview — Obama's first with the program as president — is an attempt to "reach a new audience" for Obama's argument.

"It seems like a particularly good opportunity to make a strong case that the United States Congress should fulfill their constitutional responsibility to confirm a nominee to the Supreme Court that even Republicans describe as a consensus nominee," he said.