Rest in peace, Ruth Bader Ginsberg. She was a remarkable woman with a will and a work ethic with which no one can argue. Even in her 80s and battling cancer multiple times, she almost never missed a single day on the bench. Whether or not I agree with all of her opinions and politics, I still give massive respect to a life powerfully lived, and pray that God holds her soul in His presence.
Personally, I believe the nomination for a new justice will come quickly. Trump already made public his shortlist (notice that Biden hasn't made a peep about who he would nominate?) and I believe the intent to nominate was made a long time ago and just waiting for another vacancy. If I had my guess, the only delay will be working with the top of the shortlist of candidates to come up with someone brave enough to endure, for the remainder of 2020 and maybe into 2021, a confirmation process that will make the disgusting Kavanaugh process pale by comparison. This nominee's route to the bench will look more like a trip through Dante's Fifth Circle of Hell, where wrathful and angry souls spend eternity waging battle on the River of Styx.
I don't think anyone believes a nominee can be confirmed before the election. But I think the President will start the process ASAP. I'll bet he's already talking with his shortlist. And I agree with the double-edged sword analogy. A nomination now may fire-up what has become the radical left base of the Democrats. Conversely, however, the vats of acid and burning oil that will be dumped on the nominee by the Democrats during the public confirmation hearings
will rile-up the conservative base, and given how deplorable the Kavanaugh hearings were it
might just also put a rancid taste in the mouths of a lot of independents and undecideds.
I think a lot of the latter will depend upon who is nominated and how the Republicans handle the rest of the process. Unfortunately, for that reason and the fact that he has an active senate seat, I don't think we'll see Ted Cruz's name. Probably not Harvard-law trained Army vet Tom Cotton, either...though I think he'd be more likely than Cruz.
And a big part of the handling of it will come down to that hypocrisy issue that Schumer et al. will scream every waking moment of every day. Somehow the Republicans will need to put front and center what was actually said and argued when Obama put forward Merrick Garland to take Antonin Scalia's seat. Two very important differences are that, 1) the president making the nomination and the elected senate majority were of different parties; and 2) it was a lame-duck presidency: the incumbent could not be re-elected and therefore the White House would have a new occupant for whom the people would vote in a few month's time.
When Biden made his June 25, 1992 Senate speech, which came to be called the "Biden Rule" (inaccurately because the Senate never voted on it and it never became an operating rule) arguing that should there become a vacancy the Senate should delay confirmation hearings, Bush was the incumbent facing Bill Clinton and Ross Perot in the upcoming election, there was a Democrat-controlled Senate and a Democrat-controlled House, and there was no opening on the SCOTUS bench at that time. Article II Section 2 of the Constitution doesn't say the President "may" or "when convenient"; it says "he
shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint...Judges of the supreme Court." So regardless of politics I do think the Constitution is on the side of a timely nomination.
In 1992 we had a Republican in the White House and Democrat majorities in both the House and Senate. And back then Sleepy Joe was still in full use of his faculties. So here's a brief quotation from his 1992 Senate speech that just goes to show that, nearly two decades later, D.C. is still a swampy cesspool:
Joe Biden on the Senate floor, June 25, 1992 wrote:
Given the unusual rancor...and the overall level of bitterness that sadly infects our political system and this presidential campaign already, it is my view that the prospects for anything but conflagration with respect to a Supreme Court nomination this year are remote at best.
RIP, Ruth Bader Ginsberg. And may we see a Constitutionalist take a seat on the Supreme Court.