The Register's Editorial

At this point, three days after the death of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, two things seem certain: President Barack Obama will nominate Scalia’s successor, and the Senate will refuse to approve the nomination.

In fact, it appears the Senate may choose to not even consider the nominee, whoever that will be, by refusing to bring the issue to a vote.

There’s only one explanation for this sort of obstructionism: Politics. The president is a Democrat, and the Senate is controlled by Republicans.

Of course, that’s not what Iowa’s Chuck Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, says. He argues that “it only makes sense that we defer to the American people who will elect a new president to select the next Supreme Court justice.”

That almost sounds reasonable until you consider the fact that “the American people” elected the current president, twice, and that they did so with the expectation that he would fulfill his constitutional duties as long as he remained in office.

Perhaps recognizing that the “let the people decide” argument won’t get them very far, Republicans have offered up an alternative rationale for refusing to consider an Obama nominee: precedent.

“The fact of the matter is that it has been standard practice over the last nearly 80 years that Supreme Court nominees are not nominated and confirmed during a presidential election year,” Grassley says.

Grassley's judicial nominee view differs from '08

Sen. Ted Cruz, a former Supreme Court clerk and a member of the Judiciary Committee, makes a similar argument: “We have 80 years of precedent of not confirming Supreme Court justices in an election year.”

Standard practice? Eighty years? That certainly sounds impressive.

The trouble is, during those 80 years, the opportunity for an election-year confirmation has rarely come up, and it when it last did, in February 1988, the Democratically controlled Senate, including Grassley, voted 97-0 to confirm Ronald Reagan’s nominee, Anthony Kennedy.

So, if Senate Republicans truly will be guided by precedent, they should make plans to vote on President Obama’s nominee and not discuss stalling tactics and filibusters, which seems to be the plan that’s now taking shape.

What makes the Republicans' effort all the more galling is that it flies in the face of their oft-professed, unwavering allegiance to the Constitution, a document that says the president “shall nominate,” with the “advice and consent of the Senate,” our Supreme Court justices. It doesn’t say anything at all about these duties and obligations being suspended a year or so before each president is scheduled to leave office.

The GOP effort to block an Obama nominee from the court isn’t about letting voters have their say, or respecting past precedent, or demonstrating strict adherence to the Constitution. In fact, it’s precisely the opposite.

This could have been a “profile in courage” moment for Sen. Grassley. This was an opportunity for our senior senator to be less of a politician and more of a statesman. It was a chance for him to be principled rather than partisan.

He could have made it clear that he favors a Senate vote on the matter — a move that still would enable Republicans to accept or reject the eventual nominee based on merit — but he chose instead to disregard his constitutional duty by rejecting a nominee who hasn’t even been named.

It's wrong. It's not unexpected, and it's not a surprise, but it's still wrong.