Republican Lindsey Graham, a longtime member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, tonight said he won’t vote for an Obama Supreme Court nominee unless that nominee is a “consensus choice” who can win the votes of at least half the Senate’s 54 Republicans. Otherwise, Graham said, he’ll block any Obama replacement for the late Antonin Scalia as payback for the Democrats’ “nuclear option” power play that removed the filibuster for (non-Supreme Court) judicial nominees.

“The normal rule that I’ve lived by is that you vote for qualified people even though you disagree with their philosophy,” Graham told reporters before the Republican presidential debate.

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