During last night's Republican debate in South Carolina, every single one of the Republican presidential candidates agreed with Mitch McConnell's statement that the Senate should block any nominee put forward by President Obama for the Supreme Court.
The Rubiobot was making his rounds on the Sunday bobblehead shows this morning and of course doubled down on his statement from the debate last on CNN's State of the Union:
BASH: Now, President Obama said yesterday that he plans to fulfill his Constitutional responsibilities and nominate a successor in due time and as senator, don't you have a responsibility as well to consider that nominee?
RUBIO: Well, I don't think the Senate is going to move on it. I agree with that decision. The precedent's been set. It's been over 80 years now, with in the last year of the last term of a sitting president. If there is a Supreme Court nominee, it's 80 years and there's a reason for that and the reason is that the next president will have a chance to fill that void, not someone who's never going to answer to the electorate again.
Anyone think he'd be saying that if there was a Republican president in office, or would be again be hearing the relentless calls for an "up or down vote, up or down vote" over and over again on every single television network from Republican's and their allies in the media?
After making excuses for the extreme delay and leaving the court with only eight justices for a year and pretending that is somehow just business as usual, Rubio was asked about a potential Supreme Court nominee that the Senate, including Rubio, had previously confirmed for the U.S. Court of Appeals 97-0, Sri Srinivasan.
Rubio told Bash he didn't want to get ahead of himself and comment on any particular nominee. How kind of him given the fact that they already said they'd block anyone the president nominates, whether they're qualified or not.
RUBIO: Well, there's a different criteria obviously. There's a heightened level of scrutiny you have to go through judiciary. I usually don't comment on nominees until they've gone through that process. The appellate court is important, but the Supreme Court is the ultimate appellate court, so there's a whole new level of scrutiny and hearings and testimony, so I would withhold judgment on that no matter who he nominates until that process has concluded itself.
But again, irrespective of who the president nominates, the Senate is not moving forward on it. Mitch McConnell's already made that very clear, so the next president will have a chance to appoint somebody and when I'm President of the United States, I'm going to look for someone like a Justice Scalia. They're hard to find, but there's a lot of young jurists who have been inspired by his service and his writings and these are the sorts of people I'd like to see on the Supreme Court.
