By playing political games with the pick for the next Supreme Court justice to replace the late Antonin Scalia, Democrat leaders are demonstrating their blatant hypocrisy. In response to the advice from Republican senators to let the next president make the pick, Barack Obama insisted he would still nominate a candidate. He’s merely trolling with fake concern over the Constitution. “There’s no unwritten law that says it can only be done on off years,” Obama said Tuesday. “That’s not in the constitutional text. I’m amused when I hear people who claim to be strict interpreters of the Constitution suddenly reading into it a whole series of provisions that are not there.” The Constitution is also pretty clear about the president’s enumerated powers in other areas too, and that hasn’t stopped Obama from trampling it. Yes, Obama has an enumerated power to nominate Supreme Court judges, and Republican senators aren’t saying he doesn’t — they’re saying he should wait. But Obama is setting up a straw-man argument. He’s misrepresenting the senators, saying they are forbidding him from even nominating a candidate.

In order to embarrass Republican lawmakers further, Obama hinted that he would pick a “moderate” judge that Republican senators might reconsider approving — one who will be impartial, and look to precedent yet employ their “own ethics and moral bearings” in decisions. If that isn’t a dog-whistle for legislating from the bench, we don’t know what is.

Talking about misrepresenting comments, Sen. Chuck Schumer is backpedaling on comments made in 2007 during the approval process for justices nominated by President George W. Bush. Now that the tables have turned, the Democrat is saying his comments are being mischaracterized. But they’re pretty clear:

“The Supreme Court is dangerously out of balance,” Schumer said at the time. “We cannot afford to see Justice Stevens replaced by another Roberts; or Justice Ginsburg by another Alito. Given the track record of this President and the experience of obfuscation at the hearings, with respect to the Supreme Court, at least: I will recommend to my colleagues that we should not confirm a Supreme Court nominee EXCEPT in extraordinary circumstances.”

Senators all took oaths to support and defend the Constitution. This is why they need to reject the nominee from a president whose executive actions and favored laws have again and again been unconstitutional. Obama cannot judge when someone holds constitutional values when he himself can’t judge his own actions.