Donald Trump has not been a Republican for very long, but in Saturday's debate, he perfectly captured the party's strategy for dealing with the opening on the Supreme Court following Justice Antonin Scalia's death: " Delay, delay, delay."

It is a tactic universally agreed upon by Republicans. But should they do it? The reasons they've offered are rubbish – here's why and why they will do it anyway.

Reason 1: Obama is a lame duck.

"It's been over 80 years since a lame-duck president has appointed a Supreme-Court justice," Marco Rubio asserted at Saturday night's rowdy debate.

Let's give Rubio a pass on the fact-checking and get straight to the problem: Obama is not a lame-duck president. He won't be a lame-duck president until his successor is elected in November.

Even going by the more generous (but in no way binding) "Thurmond Rule," which holds that presidents should not try to fill an open seat within six months of the end of their term, Obama is still in the clear. The Senate may have given up on governing years ago, but with a year left in his term, Obama has plenty of time to exercise the powers of the presidency.

Scalia nonsense rating: Argle-bargle.

Reason 2: The American people should have a say in who gets appointed.

That was the line from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who appealed to the gods of democracy to support his delaying tactics. "The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice."

On its own, that's a reasonable sentiment. But McConnell followed it up with this: "Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president."

McConnell's shaky if-then logic requires us to ignore that the American people have already offered their opinion on who should select the next Justice. In November 2012 they re-elected Barack Obama, giving him the authority to nominate whomever he chooses to fill a Supreme Court vacancy.

Scalia nonsense rating: Pure applesauce.

Reason 3: The country is too divided to name a new Justice.

Chuck Grassley, the Senate Judiciary Committee chair, offered up this logic for leaving Scalia's seat open for the next year. "Given the huge divide in the country, and the fact that this president, above all others, has made no bones about his goal to use the courts to circumvent Congress and push through his own agenda, it only makes sense that we defer to the American people who will elect a new president to select the next Supreme Court justice."

Give Grassley points for novelty. At a time when Americans are fed up with obstructionism, Grassley is endorsing it as the proper response to political division. Only one catch: The upcoming election is unlikely to change any of this. The current trend is toward more polarization, not less. And as the GOP has demonstrated time and again since 2009, they don't believe that the election of Democratic president confers any sort of mandate or legitimacy.

Scalia nonsense rating: Jiggery-pokery.

Though thin on logic, the above reasons serve an important purpose. They provide rhetorical covering fire for the GOP, a wall of words meant to distract observers from the real – and entirely rational – reasons they intend to block any Obama nominee:

Real Reason 1: The conservative majority on the Court has been an agent of sweeping political change.

Elections come and go, but a Supreme Court majority can last for nearly half a century. That's how long Republican appointees have dominated the Court. In that time, the Court's conservative majority has been a powerful political force, whittling away core liberal initiatives like the Voting Rights Act, campaign finance reform and reproductive rights. That's not an advantage they're likely to relinquish without a fight.

Nor do they have to. There is nothing unconstitutional about blocking Obama's nominees. Sure, they may pay a political price. Americans are already fuming about a defunct Congress – they're unlikely to be happy about a gummed-up Supreme Court. But it may well be a price Republicans are willing to pay. Because…

Real Reason 2: They have no other option.

The current vacancy on the court already aids liberals. With four liberal and four conservative justices, the contentious cases the court is about to hear are likely to result in split decisions. This means the lower court's ruling stands – and the lower courts are primarily Democratic. Add to that the likelihood that Republicans will be blamed for blocking Obama's appointee and suddenly a swift confirmation process sounds like a pretty good idea.