The chief justice doesn’t like his conservative Supreme Court colleagues getting called out for judicial overreach.
She could have retired at any time, including right after Obama was elected. The Republicans couldn’t have held the spot open for years. It would have become a major election issue.
I’d bet good money McConnell would have tried to find a way/reason to keep it open, look at all the rules making/breaking they did to fill/keep a seat empty close to elections, I’m sure they’d just come up with some other bullshit
I’m sure he would have tried, but we’re dealing with massive hypotheticals at this point. Under your argument, we should not have a justice at any point ever step down because McConnell would try to block a nomination. Yes, he would try. Doesn’t change the fact that the best move was for her to step down at the beginning of the term.
We should honestly be pushing for justices getting on in years and having health issues to step down at the beginning of presidential terms regardless.
Yeah, but would it have been one that anyone cared about? No one seems to mind that they held Gorsuch’s seat for a year and then appointed ACB. At this point I have zero faith in the electorate having any understanding of government; holding 2 seats for years would have just been spun as “now we REALLY need to win or we lose these 2 seats.”