McConnell being McConnell, it’s safe to assume he thought through the implications of an election-year SCOTUS vacancy long before the actuality arose. (The fact that it is conservative legend Scalia being replaced only raises the stakes.) And, as a purely political matter—setting aside questions of constitutional intent, precedent, or propriety—blanket refusal to consider any nominee was probably McConnell’s best card to play. As Larry Sabato, head of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, notes, the alternative was a full-blown confirmation battle, in which individual GOP members would have needed to take positions, and ultimately cast votes, on a flesh-and-blood nominee. “McConnell recognized, This can only divide us—‘us’ being Republicans,” says Sabato.

By contrast, continues Sabato, channeling his inner McConnell, “If I rule out hearings, the right is happy for once, the outside groups are thrilled, and I can always permit individual senators like Susan Collins or [Mark] Kirk or people who are up in blue states and purple states to say they disagree with me.” (This is, in fact, what Kirk and Collins have done.)

But even for members not facing reelection, there are advantages to taking a vote off the table while it is still merely hypothetical.

“People have no idea who Obama will pick,” says Sabato. “Suppose the individual chosen becomes a cult hero, becomes very popular. Having Senate hearings will probably only highlight that and help them become a cultural icon. You reduce or eliminate part of that by eliminating hearings.”

Trudging into the weeds of identity politics, imagine that Obama taps, as The New York Times recently suggested he might, a “barrier-breaking nominee” such as Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who would be the first black woman on the Court. Sure, refusing to hold hearings on Lynch under the current circumstances would earn McConnell and Co. considerable abuse. But think of how much worse things could get if Republicans waited until after Lynch was nominated before making clear that they had no intention of confirming her.

Far better to short-circuit the entire process right now and be labeled garden-variety obstructionists than to let a nominee surface and be labeled racist/sexist/anti-whatever obstructionists. “You do it before you have any idea who the president will pick,” says Sabato. “Then McConnell says, I had no idea who this would be! I just said it would be bad practice—just as Vice President Biden did in 1992—for the president to force a Supreme Court nominee of any kind down the throats of senators in an election year. Period.”

Sabato’s Biden citation is in reference to the awkward assist-from-the-past that the V.P. has given McConnell. Since Monday, Republicans have been gleefully flogging a 1992 C-SPAN clip of then-Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Biden ruminating on the possibility of a High Court vacancy: “President Bush should consider following the practice of a majority of his predecessors and not—and not—name a nominee until after the November election is completed.” Biden also suggested that, if Bush were to send up a name, the Judiciary Committee should “seriously consider not scheduling confirmation hearings on the nomination until after the political campaign season is over.”