WHEN ANTONIN SCALIA died suddenly in 2016, Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, wasted no time staking out the Republican position on the conservative jurist’s successor. Hours after news broke of Mr Scalia’s demise, Mr McConnell declared that “the American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court justice”. With nearly nine months to go before the presidential election, he told America that his legislative chamber would take no action on any Supreme Court nominee named by Barack Obama. “This vacancy”, he announced, articulating a broad principle, “should not be filled until we have a new president.”

It was an aggressive move. The constitution gives presidents the power to nominate federal judges, including Supreme Court justices, and the Senate’s “advice and consent” are necessary before they take their seats. But Mr McConnell took the unprecedented step of building a blockade around Scalia’s seat rather than give a hearing to Merrick Garland, the moderate chief judge of the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals nominated by Mr Obama. After stonewalling Judge Garland for the remaining 11 months of Mr Obama’s term, the Republican Senate avidly took up Donald Trump’s nominee, the highly conservative Neil Gorsuch. He was confirmed on April 7, 2017.

McConnell’s gambit proved to be a thorough success: instead of a Democratic president replacing one of the court’s most right-wing justices with a left-leaning judge, Mr Scalia’s seat was filled with a 49-year-old originalist who would safeguard the conservative majority. But would the new principle of demurring on Supreme Court nominations in presidential election years stick? The former chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Iowa Republican Charles Grassley, said in 2018 that he would honour the 2016 rule and refuse to preside over a Supreme Court confirmation hearing were the shoe to be on the other foot in 2020. "If I’m chairman, they won’t take it up", Mr Grassley said, “because I pledged that in 2016”. Mr Grassley’s replacement as chair, Lindsey Graham, has echoed this promise. “If an opening comes in the last year of President Trump’s term and the primary process has started”, Mr Graham said in 2018, “we’ll wait until the next election”.

In the past, Mr McConnell has hedged when asked if he agrees with the current and former Judiciary Committee chairs. But on May 28th, at a talk to the Chamber of Commerce in Paducah, Kentucky, his home state, the senator made his position clear. “If a Supreme Court justice dies next year, what would you do?”, he was asked. Mr McConnell took a long sip of iced tea and smiled: “oh, we’d fill it”, he said, to laughter. As important as questions of policy are, he said, “what can't be undone is a lifetime appointment to a young man or woman who believes in the quaint notion that the job of a judge is to follow the law. That’s the most important thing we’ve done for the country."

Chuck Schumer, the Democratic minority leader in the Senate, took to Twitter to accuse the majority leader of hypocrisy. In response, Mr McConnell now says his no-hearing rule applies only when the Senate and White House are controlled by different parties. However he tries to justify the change of policy, Mr McConnell seems unfazed by charges of inconsistency. If a Supreme Court vacancy opens up before the 2020 election, Mr McConnell will promptly fill it. Principle seems to count for little. But votes count, and he has 53 to the Democrats’ 47.