for as long as President Obama is in office. We should not voluntarily accept the precedent that Republicans are setting in terms of blockading SCOTUS nominations (or any nominations, really). President Obama has been well within his rights as President to nominate and have the Senate consider a nominee of his choosing no matter how long he has left in his Presidential term, especially since there has obviously been more than enough for the time for the Senate to have considered his choice. This blockade has NOTHING to do with trying to "respect" the will of the American public, their feelings about Garland, or even logistical issues such as the amount of time the Senate has left on its work calendar to schedule and hold hearings and a vote. This is all about keeping Scalia's seat empty until a REPUBLICAN President can replace him with a like-minded Justice. They thought that they would be able to shoehorn a Republican into the WH next January (and they conceivably still could though probably not), so they decided that blockading a potential replacement was the best strategy to do it. For the most part, they have gotten away with it. Whether they can manage to do that for another 4-8 years under a new Democratic WH is another matter altogether but this seat *should* be President Obama's seat to fill as long as the nomination remains active and his to make IMHO.
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