The race to replace Scalia, and to find a GOP nominee

The opening conversation in last Saturday’s Republican debate in South Carolina focused on an unexpected topic — the death of legendary Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

I knew Scalia, the first Italian-American to join the nation’s highest court, personally, and admired him tremendously. He was an icon, a scholar of the Constitution who defended it to the ends of the earth. The void left by his death will be an ideological and political challenge, as members of Congress struggle with replacing him during an election year.

President Obama said he would move swiftly to nominate Scalia’s replacement, but Republicans like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called on the president to leave the choice to his successor.

This is a disaster in the making. I urge the president to nominate a candidate whom both Republicans and Democrats can support. Anything short of that will gridlock Congress for the entire year, and nothing will be accomplished. Is that what we want? C’mon, friends! We’re finally making progress in nominating a Republican to run for president. Anything is possible!

The first-in-the-nation primary on Feb. 9 proved more decisively than I ever could have imagined that people are fed up with politics as usual. Republican turnout was so impressive that it shattered records in New Hampshire — 285,000 voters, 15 percent more than in 2012. On the Democratic side, 250,000 turned out, also an impressive showing.

Both Donald Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders dominated the fields, with Trump receiving approximately 35 percent of the vote, and Sanders crushing Hillary Clinton by more than 20 percentage points.

Trump’s victory was the largest in the New Hampshire Republican primary in recent years, reinforcing the proposition that he is a strong candidate. Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s more moderate message resonated with New Hampshire voters as well, earning him a second-place finish. (Wow, was I right?) The other four conservative and establishment candidates — Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush and Chris Christie — were all clustered closely behind Kasich.