Hours after Donald Trump became the likely nominee, the conservative website RedState wrote that the Senate should confirm President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland.
The rationale is that Trump can’t win a general election against likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and that Garland is the best scenario coming from a Democrat.
“Republicans must know that there is absolutely no chance that we will win the White House in 2016 now. They must also know that we are likely to lose the Senate as well. So the choices, essentially, are to confirm Garland and have another bite at the apple in a decade, or watch as President Clinton nominates someone who is radically more leftist and 10-15 years younger, and we are in no position to stop it,” Leon Wolf wrote on RedState.
The website calls Garland, who Republican leaders in the Senate vow to block his confirmation, “not a great choice, but … not a terrible one.”
RedState, run by Editor-In-Chief Erick Erickson, is part of the “Never Trump” movement. He has plotted with fellow conservatives on ways to keep Trump from winning the nomination.
Now that it’s clear that Trump will be the Republican nominee, his organization is cutting its losses and looking to make the best of what they say is a bad situation.
“The calculus has changed — confirm Merrick Garland before it is too late,” Wolf wrote.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell hasn’t changed his position, however. “Republicans continue to believe that the American people should have a voice in this decision and the next president should make the nomination,” McConnell spokesman Don Stewart told NBC News.
This article originally appeared on NBCNews.com.
Leigh Ann Caldwell