Accepting the theory that the best defense is offense, the Republican National Committee is going to be as offensive as possible in attacking Democrats over the Supreme Court and their position that everyone should do their constitutional duty and fill the vacancy.
A task force housed within the Republican National Committee will orchestrate attack ads, petitions and media outreach to bolster a strategy that Senate Republicans adopted as soon as Justice Antonin Scalia died last month: refusing to consider an Obama nominee out of hopes that the next president will be a Republican.
The RNC will contract with America Rising Squared, an outside group targeting Democrats that's run by a longtime aide to GOP Sen. John McCain. GOP chairman Reince Priebus said it would be the most comprehensive judicial response effort in the party's history. […]
RNC officials said that in addition to scouring the nominee's history for anything that can be used against him or her, the party will also work to portray Democrats as hypocritical, dredging up comments that Vice President Joe Biden and other Democrats made in previous years suggesting presidents shouldn't ram through nominees to the high court in the midst of an election.
McCain must be so proud. No matter who the nominee is, he or she will be vilified. That's an escalation of Sen. John Cornyn's (R-TX) threat last week to treat a nominee like a "piñata," promising that the nominee's future career would be jeopardized by Republican attacks. Their threats are clearly aimed at trying to get all of President Obama's potential nominees to withdraw their names from consideration. "We will destroy you," is the promise they're making to anyone who might agree to be put forward. Never mind that that person will be highly qualified, beyond reproach, and has probably already been approved by Republicans and Democrats for his or her current position.
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The RNC says they'll be "targeting Democrats facing tough races over their insistence that Obama, in his final months in office, gets to pick a justice that could reshape the court's ideological balance for decades." Those "tough" races for Democrats? They're Senate races including, Ohio, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania. Where polling has shown the voting public is very much opposed to the Republican blockade.
If Republicans want to make this year's Senate elections all about the Supreme Court, well, bring it on. We're more than ready for them.