"O’Connor ... rejected the notion that the next president should be able to pick the next justice after the election. 'I don’t agree. I think we need somebody there now to do the job, and let’s get on with it ...'"

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COMMENTS: 
*  While a committed and long term Republican and conservative, O'Connor was a justice who was able to weigh a case solely on it's merits. She was truly a non-activist judge, unlike Scalia, Thomas and Alito who are all committed activists for conservative causes (Bush v. Gore, Citizens United, and gutting the Voting Rights Act).  She was despised by Scalia for being a uncertain conservative vote. Much like the right now despises Roberts. She's 100 percent correct. Get on with it!
*  Absolutely correct. Senator McConnell made a grave error. He pronounced that he intended to obstruct the Constitutional duty of the elected President of the United States for close to a year, and declared that obstruction was based on trying to take that obligation away from the elected Polltical party. He said he was not going to allow the President to meet his responsibility arbitrarily knowing that the President could not run again. He said he intended to steal the right from a President that won that right by over 100 electoral college votes, and 6 million votes cast
*  ... Obama is currently reviewing (not a small task) and will fulfill his constitional duty to nominate as he said. The issue is that McConnell and most of the Republicans in senate have said they will not fulfill their constitional duty to consider the nominee.
*  McConnell took the low road in the hours after Scalia's death and did not speak for conservatives like me. The constitution says the President shall nominate; advise and consent is congress' opportunity to object. At nearly every turn, as liberals try to paint conservatives with a broad brush, Republican leaders grab the brush and paint themselves.
*  The American people having a voice. I know the left hates that but it is a good thing.
    *  And they used their voice to elect Obama twice. He appoints this justice. The eventual winner of the presidential race will appoint the next one. That's how it works.
*  No matter what, Senate Republicans will block any nominee this year. The question is: Will they abide by or defy the Constitution in so doing? Abiding by the Constitution means: a. Holding confirmation hearings as usual this summer  b. Rejecting the nominee at the end of those hearings.  Defying the Constitution means refusing to hold hearings this year.  For now, the plan is to defy the Constitution because, politically, that will be less damaging than attacking and then rejecting an appealing Obama nominee this summer.  Of course there’s a 3rd approach: Influence Obama to nominate a moderate and then… are you sitting down?... APPROVING that reasonable nominee. Fat chance. So, the GOP has itself in a sling: Defy the constitution or suffer through awful hearings. It couldn’t happen to a nicer party.
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O'Connor on SCOTUS: Obama should 'get on with it'
By Nick Gass, February 18, 2016

Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor says President Barack Obama should get to nominate a replacement for the late Justice Antonin Scalia, rebuking Republicans who have in recent days shown reticence toward voting — or even holding hearings — to approve a successor in an election year.

“Well, you just have to pick the best person you can under the circumstances as the appointing authority must do, and one that we care about as a nation and as a people,” the 85-year-old O'Connor said in an interview with Fox’s local Phoenix affiliate. “And I wish the president well as he makes choices and goes down that line. It’s hard.”

The fact that the vacancy created by Scalia’s death occurred in an election year “creates too much talk around the thing that isn’t necessary,” she said. O’Connor stepped down from the bench in 2006 to care for her ailing husband, who died in 2009.

O’Connor, the first woman to serve on the court and a nominee of President Ronald Reagan, rejected the notion that the next president should be able to pick the next justice after the election.

“I don’t agree. I think we need somebody there now to do the job, and let’s get on with it,” she said.
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