Left-leaning Fox News contributor Julie Roginsky lashed out at her co-hosts on Monday after they complained that President Barack Obama did not deserve to nominate a Supreme Court justice to replace Antonin Scalia because he only had 11 months left in office.
Roginsky warned on Monday's edition of Outnumbered that Republican presidential candidates, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and even her co-hosts were making a political mistake by arguing that Obama should not fulfill his constitutional duties.
"Obama cannot and will not replace Justice Scalia," Fox News contributor Guy Benson opined. "There's an election process already underway, the American people are voting to select a new president. That new president, no matter who he or she may be, will select that replacement."
Roginsky called that thinking "insane."
"The president does have the authority and the right -- he's still the president, I'm sorry to say for all of you until 2017 -- he does have the right to put somebody forward," Roginsky explained. "The Senate could very easily vote that person down, give them an up and down vote."
"Where the Republicans are missing the boat here, I think, politically," she continued, "is that instead of saying, 'Sure, we'll take up Obama, we'll take him up on it, we'll consider it, and we'll vote on it.' And then the person wouldn't go through anyway. They are digging their heels in and saying we're not even going to consider it."
"That is a massive, massive political mistake for the Republicans, It makes them look obstructionist," Roginsky added. "It makes them look as if they want to get nothing done."
"It makes them look like Democrats," co-host Andrea Tantaros quipped.
"You criticize the Democrats for it?" Roginsky replied. "Don't do the same thing. Give them an up or down vote."
Fox Business contributor Dagen McDowell declared that hearings on President Obama's Supreme Court nominee would be bad for the country.
"If Mitch McConnell schedules a vote, if President Obama nominates somebody to the high court, can you imagine the damage it's going to do to the court given the partisan divide?" she observed. "And the damage it could do to the Senate in arguing over this in an election year."
"If you want to think that the next president having that nomination at his disposal is divisive during an election year, can you imagine the fight that's going to go on if there's a discussion?" McDowell asked.
"You guys," Roginsky interrupted. "I'm sorry Justice Scalia chose this time to pass away. I'm sorry it wasn't more to your liking a year ago because that's exactly what I'm hearing from the Republicans. The Republicans are saying we never had somebody confirmed in the last year of the president's term, we actually did in 1988."
Tantaros, however, concluded that voters "should decide at the ballot box who they want on the court."
Watch the video below from Fox News' Outnumbered, broadcast Feb. 15, 2016.
