Barack Obama Vetting Moderate GOP Gov. Brian Sandoval for Scalia’s Supreme Court Seat

HotAir.com:

Gotta give credit where it’s due. Obama and his pal Harry know how to troll Republicans.

Brian Sandoval, the centrist Republican governor of Nevada, is being vetted by the White House for a possible nomination to the Supreme Court, according to two people familiar with the process.

Sandoval is increasingly viewed by some key Democrats as perhaps the only nominee President Obama could select who would be able to break a Republican blockade in the Senate…

Sandoval met Monday with Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid, a fellow Nevadan with whom he enjoys cordial relations.

A person familiar with the conversation said that while Sandoval told Reid he had not made a final decision on whether he would accept a Supreme Court nomination, he would allow the vetting process to move forward. Another person in Nevada familiar with the process confirmed that the process is underway.

Sandoval is pro-choice, expanded Medicaid, and oversaw Nevada’s construction of its own ObamaCare exchange (after the first attempt went sideways). He’s as “friendly” to Democrats as a modern Republican gets. Even so, I’m trying to imagine the reaction on the right if a Supreme Court vacancy opened up and a Republican president decided to bypass scores of conservative justices to nominate a center-left Democrat. And not just any center-left Democrat but someone who’s arguably underqualified: Sandoval spent a few years as attorney general of Nevada and then a handful more as a federal district judge, but most SCOTUS nominees have extensive appellate experience. Maybe Obama could sell this to the left on grounds that, with a Republican majority in the Senate vowing they’ll obstruct anyone he puts forward, a centrist Republican nominee is the best they can hope for. I doubt the right would go for that if the tables were turned, though; they’d want a Republican president to name a mainstream conservative and then fight tooth and nail to break the Senate’s will.

Maybe Obama could convince liberals that naming Sandoval would be worth it for the lulz. McConnell and Grassley would start to sweat as the White House proclaimed that the GOP is so intractable they’d actually block a member of their own party from the High Court out of personal pique towards Obama. 

RELATED:  'Biden rules' cited in GOP senators' wrangle over Supreme Court nomination