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 The vacancy on the court, which is now evenly split 4-4 between
its conservative and liberal wings, had Republicans calling on
President Barack Obama to refrain from choosing a successor to the
right-leaning Scalia while Democrats urged Obama to do as the U.S.
Constitution requires and put forward a candidate to face
confirmation in an albeit hostile Senate.
The prospect of such a battle drew swift and furious comment from
candidates vying to be elected president in November.
Facing off in a debate only hours after the 79-year-old Scalia's
death was announced, some Republican presidential candidates seized
the moment to caution voters that their party's front-runner,
billionaire businessman Donald Trump, could not be trusted to
nominate a stalwart conservative.
"If Donald Trump is president, he will appoint liberals," charged
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas during the debate in South Carolina,
which holds a Republican nominating contest next Saturday.
 "Two branches of government hang in the balance, not just the
presidency, but the Supreme Court," Cruz said. "If we get this
wrong, if we nominate the wrong candidate, the Second Amendment,
life, marriage, religious liberty, every one of those hangs in the
balance."
Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina also took a shot at Trump.
"Donald Trump is not a conservative, so I don’t trust him to pick a
judge," Graham said before the debate. A real estate mogul, Trump
has supported Democratic politicians in the past.
Trump, who also has taken several positions at odds with Republican
orthodoxy, joined other candidates at the debate in insisting that
Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican majority leader in the Senate,
stand by his promise to block any Obama high court choice.
“It’s up to Mitch McConnell and everyone else to stop it," Trump, a
former reality TV show host, said. "It’s called delay, delay,
delay."
Under the U.S. system, the president nominates justices for the
nine-member court and the Senate confirms them. The last justice to
be approved by the Senate of the opposite party during an election
year was Justice Anthony Kennedy in 1988.
Obama has already indicated that he intends to send a choice to the
Senate in coming weeks, meaning that the nominee will be heavily
scrutinized by presidential candidates in both parties - and more
than likely be opposed by the majority of Republicans.
"The court may genuinely be a major issue this year," said David
Axelrod, a former top political adviser to Obama. "It will be a hell
of a fight."
SOCIAL ISSUES ON DOCKET
Criticism of the court, which in recent years has upheld Obama's
sweeping healthcare plan and legalized same-sex marriage, has
already been a thread running through several Republican candidates'
campaigns.
The conservative majority on the court had appeared poised to
invalidate Obama's immigration and climate-change policies. The loss
of Scalia, considered to be a lodestar of conservative legal
thought, and the potential swing of the court to the left, ensures
that whatever drama plays out in the Senate this year will be
mirrored on the campaign trail.
“There is no more clarifying debate in politics these days than when
it comes to Supreme Court nominees,” said Jim Manley, a Democratic
strategist and former aide to Senator Harry Reid of Nevada. "This
now is for all the marbles."
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Reid was majority leader of the Senate when it confirmed previous
Obama court nominees Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Manley called
McConnell's threat not to allow a vote on a potential Scalia
replacement "completely beyond the pale."
Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton seemed inclined to make
McConnell's threat a campaign issue.
"The Republicans in the Senate and on the campaign trail who are
calling for Justice Scalia’s seat to remain vacant dishonor our
Constitution," Clinton said in a statement.
Axelrod said that the issue could help Clinton, locked in a tight
race with U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
“I think it will make electability and experience in this realm more
important," he said.
OBAMA'S OPTIONS
Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine,
and a longtime observer of the Supreme Court nomination process,
said Obama likely has two options.
"He could nominate a more liberal candidate who would have no real
chance of getting through a Republican Senate - in which case this
would become a salient political issue in 2016," Hasen said. Or he
could nominate a more moderate candidate who might gain enough
Republican support to gain approval, he said.
There are risks to both approaches: A Republican obstruction of a
liberal nominee would animate the Democratic Party's progressive
base in an election year but would leave the court without a
potentially tie-breaking vote for perhaps a year.
That same Democratic base might view a moderate nominee as a
betrayal, while conservative Republican voters likely would frown on
any senator who voted to approve an Obama choice.
Manley said that McConnell has already shown that he is unwilling to
support any choice made by Obama and that the White House must act
aggressively. “The president should go forward and nominate the most
liberal candidate possible,” he said.
Given the need to fire up its most passionate voters, that might
just be exactly what Republican candidates want as well.
(This version of the story was refiled to fix the mistyped word
"then" to "than" in paragraph 16.)
(Writing by James Oliphant; Reporting by Ginger Gibson and James
Oliphant; Additional reporting by Steve Holland and Jeff Mason;
Editing by Howard Goller)
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