Mourn the passing of Antonin Scalia, Genghis Khan of the US Supreme Court

God alone knows to what depths their spirits sank after it, but Republicans were in mourning even before the latest doolallyfest kicked off in South Carolina, to the benefit of no one but Hillary Clinton. And man, did it ever kick off. Shortly before the debate began, news broke that Antonin Scalia, the Genghis Khan of the Supreme Court, had died. The nine justices’ sacred role as guardians and interpreters of the Constitution makes them more influential US political figures than anyone other than the President (and that’s a close call). These “supremes” are more famous than Diana Ross, and to the “hang ’em, flog ’em, eletrocute ’em, and just for luck lynch ’em” persuasion, Scalia was an archangel.

To progressives and minorities whose interests seldom concerned him, Scalia’s sensationally archaic (“originalist”) rulings – he supported a state’s right to criminialise what he elegantly knew as “sodomy” – made him Satan. Some liberals reacted to his death like Munchkins upon the Wicked Witch of the West’s demise. Others were more restrained. “Funny”, tweeted one Anthony Jeselnik.” I actually support Scalia on this one.”

When the debate began, all six surviving candidates expressed the hope that the Senate, under a Republican majority, will delay confirming Obama’s nomination for the new justice so that the choice falls to the next President. Small wonder. Until now, the Supreme Court had a 5-4 conservative bias. An Obama pick would switch the advantage to the liberals, and the implications for the future of gun control, abortion and political funding cannot be overstated. It’s even possible that his replacement may alter the future of the planet as Scalia did himself.

Before we come to that, a little reflection on what took place on a debate stage bookended by John Kasich and Ben Carson, the no-hopers and more mannerly of the GOP candidates. Dead centre, flanked by the establishment twins from Florida, Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, stood the self-styled renegades, human emetic Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. The Donald had jettisoned his traditional tangerine facial hue for a crimson so deep that he fell victim to the laws of optics, and vanished into the red background. What followed the Scalia panegyrics cannot glibly be dismissed as a car crash. This was a massive motorway pile of the ghoulishly mesmerising type. For two hours, not one of them gave a detailed, substantive answer on anything. Instead, they devoted themselves to calling each other liars.

When Cruz called Trump a liar, Trump responded that Cruz is a bigger liar even than Jeb. Rubio, recovering from his fiasco of a week earlier, ploughed virgin territory by accusing Cruz of “spreading lies” about his (Rubio’s) flip-flopping on immigration reform. During a brief respite from this Socratic dialogue, Jeb berated Trump for savaging big brother George W. It’s a weird old night when Trump comes the closest to talking sense – in this case, by blaming W for both 9/11 (he blew the chance to assassinate Bin Laden) and the subsequent adventure in Iraq. As the father of children, replied Rubio, he often thanks God that it was Bush in the White House on 9/11, and not Al Gore.

That set me thinking about how different the world might look today had Gore become President in January 2001. Apart from pursuing a marginally more aggressive climate change policy, Gore would not never have started the Iraq war that led to the destabilisation of the region, the civil war in Syria, the rise of Isis and the migrant crisis that threatens the EU. That result, and all the horrors that stemmed from it, turned on the Supreme Court decision – split 5-4 on purely partisan grounds – to halt the Florida recount and entrust the Oval Office to “Dubya”. On that basis, Scalia has a claim to have changed the course of human history.

If Obama can replace him with a liberal justice to shift the 5-4 advantage to the progressives, all well and good. Even if not, this incalculably infantile debate suggests more strongly than ever that it will be Hillary who picks the next justice. In which case, she might invite a jug-eared constitutional lawyer from Chicago to become the first former President on the Supreme Court since William Howard Taft in 1921. Imagine Justice Obama using his swing vote to effect the gun control that so painfully eluded him in the White House. Scalia was admired for his mordant wit, I read. From the afterlife in which this devout Catholic ostentatiously believed, here’s hoping he gets the chance to relish the irony of that.