Republicans Plan to Continue SCOTUS Obstruction If Clinton Wins After Recounts

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Although Donald Trump has been elected president based on electoral votes, there’s still a small chance that he may not actually be the one being inaugurated in January. With a recounts proceeding in Michigan and Wisconsin, and the odds—however small—that “faithless electors” will switch their votes to Clinton when the Electoral College meets on December 12, many people are still not sure who is going to be president.

However, if on the off chance that Hillary Clinton is the one entering the Oval Office in January, Senate Republicans have made it clear that they will drag their feet on any Supreme Court Justice nominations she might put forth.

It’s a clear, and cowardly, political move designed to hold one branch of the government hostage if the Republicans don’t get their way. It’s a temper tantrum, akin to the party holding its breath until it gets what it wants.

Most likely it will end the same way, with the party finally gasping for breath and not getting what it wants. After all, you know that a child can’t hold their breath until they die, and not even the staunched road blocking Republicans are likely to hold SCOTUS hostage in this way for four whole years. That doesn’t mean they won’t try, though.

Texas Senator and former Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz has claimed that there is a “historical precedent” for only having eight justices, but he’s wrong. Every year before 1869, there were fewer than nine justices in the past. That's because there weren’t nine seats. Although the Senate has removed seats in the past, when they felt that there didn’t need to be as many as there were, these weren’t temper tantrums.

It’s true that the Supreme Court hasn’t always had an odd number of seats, but with an odd number of justices, it's impossible to have a tie, and that’s at the core of the issue. When SCOTUS has a tied decision, nothing happens. The lower court’s ruling stands, but the issue isn’t necessarily settled with that, so it exists in limbo. This makes it hard to enforce relevant laws, which flies in the face of the entire point, and history, of the Supreme Court.

Hugely important issues come before the Court every year, and since Justice Antonin Scalia’s death, several have been put off, multiple times, so they can actually be dealt with when there are nine justices again. That’s not going to get better if Republicans keep this up.

Of course, if it stands that Donald Trump does take the Presidential office in January, we can count on a conservative justice being placed on the Court, which would have tremendous implications for the civil liberties that have been granted by the Supreme Court in previous years.