Debate Launches Right Into Scalia: 'Delay, Delay, Delay'

Each candidate gets a question on the subject
By Newser Editors,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 13, 2016 8:43 PM CST
Debate Launches Right Into Scalia: 'Delay, Delay, Delay'
Republican presidential candidates, from left, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, businessman Donald Trump, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson take the stage before the CBS News Republican presidential debate at the Peace Center.   (AP Photo/John Bazemore)

Six Republican candidates for president took to the stage in South Carolina on Saturday and immediately observed a moment of silence for Antonin Scalia. The first questions for each man were about filling the departed Supreme Court justice's seat. They largely sang the same tune: that President Obama shouldn't nominate someone, but probably will, and that the Senate should make sure that the decision ultimately falls to the next president. John Kasich, Ben Carson, and Ted Cruz called on Obama to pass on making a nomination.

  • Donald Trump: "I think [Obama's] going to do it [nominate a justice] whether I'm comfortable with it or not. It's called delay, delay, delay."
  • Kasich: "I would like the president for once here to put the country first ... I believe that the president should not go forward."

  • Carson: "We should be thinking about how can we create some healing in this land. We're not going to get healing with President Obama."
  • Marco Rubio: "I do not believe the president should nominate someone. It's been 80 years since a lame duck president has chosen a justice."
  • Jeb Bush: "Of course the president has every right to nominate Supreme Court justices. There's no doubt in my mind that Barack Obama will not have a consensus pick."
  • Cruz: "We are one justice away from a Supreme Court that will reverse" decisions on abortion and the Second Amendment.
In FiveThirtyEight's liveblog of the debate, Nate Silver observes that Scalia's death "poses more risks for Trump because it could turn Republican voters’ focus to 'values' issues: social and Constitutional questions on which Trump does not have a reliably conservative record." (More GOP debate stories.)

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