Kasich: Replacing Scalia ‘another political war’

Presidential candidate John Kasich said late Wednesday that filling the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s vacancy on the Supreme Court will increase partisan strife.

“The whole thing is melting down,” he told host Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s “Hardball” in a town hall just days before the South Carolina Republican primary. “The problem is that we’re going to have another political war here.

{mosads}“[President] Obama has so polarized this Congress that there’s almost no possibility anybody’s going to get confirmed there,” the Ohio governor added. “He’s going to send somebody up there who won’t be confirmed.

“Most of the wells in Washington are poisoned. It’s mess. You can undo it but you’ve got to be patient.”

Kasich, who placed second in the New Hampshire primaries, argued that as president, he would respect judicial independence and refrain from influencing Supreme Court rulings.

“Sometimes I’m going to agree, sometimes I’m going to disagree, but I’m not going to run the court,” he said.

“I just want somebody with conservative values who’s not going to try to make law,” Kasich added of the qualities he would seek for Scalia’s replacement.

Kasich then charged that Obama’s current standoff with Congress over replacing Scalia, who died unexpectedly Saturday at the age of 79, stems from the president’s isolation from America’s lawmakers.

“When you’re an executive, you have an obligation to really get out there, really get out there, really get out there,” he said. “You’ve got to be patient and find people who really like you. We’ve got to rebuild those relationships.”

Kasich additionally bemoaned the increasingly volatile rhetoric between his fellow candidates on the campaign trail.

“I just don’t think people should be calling people names,” he said. “If you insulted someone on the House floor, everyone on the House floor would condemn you.”

Scalia’s absence occurs as Obama is wrapping up his last term in office. The president is now pressuring the GOP-led Congress to confirm his nominee for the high court, setting up a major battle before next November’s presidential election.

Kasich is in fifth place in South Carolina, just 0.3 points behind former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in the RealClearPolitics average of polls. The primary is Saturday.