President Obama is vetting Nevada’s Republican governor Brian Sandoval as a possible replacement for Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, The Washington Post is reporting.

According to the Post, “Sandoval is increasingly viewed by some key Democrats as perhaps the only nominee President Obama could select who would be able to break a Republican blockade in the Senate.”

The GOP says it will refuse to consider any nominee put forth by President Obama, and will take no action until a new president is sworn in. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell emphasized Tuesday night to a group of conservative House members that there’s not a “snowball’s chance in h***” he will back down.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest wouldn’t comment on the leak of Sandoval’s name specifically, but said Obama was committed to finding “the best person to fill the vacancy at the Supreme Court” regardless of party, claiming the “individual’s qualifications, and their experience and their view of the law” would “take precedence over any sort of political consideration.”

Who is Gov. Brian Sandoval and Why Would Obama Float His Name?

Gov. Brian Sandoval is a young, popular Latino Republican who took office in 2011, and won reelection in a landslide, winning over 70% percent of the vote. He reached the governor’s office after serving first as Attorney General and then as a Federal district judge. Slate reports that Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, a liberal Democrat, recommended Sandoval for a job during the George W. Bush administration.

Now, who he is not. He is no Antonin Scalia. Gov. Sandoval is both pro-abortion and now supports same-sex marriage. In 2014, Sandoval gave up on maintaining traditional marriage in his state by declaring Nevada’s same-sex marriage ban is “no longer defensible in court.”

So Gov. Sandoval is pro-choice, pro-same-sex marriage and is enthusiastically supported by Reid. What could go wrong there?

Already some are suggesting Obama is floating the name only to try to weaken the GOP resolve:

He’s not going to pick Sandoval. He wants reporters to ask hypotheticals and peel off GOPers who say “maybe.” https://t.co/szXYAqkGMh

— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) February 24, 2016

… or worse, to paint the GOP as racist if they fight a Latino.

Media knows Obama won't appoint Sandoval. But they run the leak anyway to show how "racist" GOP congress it to their own. That's the game

— Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) February 24, 2016

What Obama Says He is Looking for in a Justice

The leaking of Gov. Sandoval’s name came a couple hours after President Obama posted on SCOTUS Blog, a website that follows the Supreme Court, what he’s looking for in a Justice nominee.

After saying he would want someone who will interpret and not make law, not a judicial activist, he went on to describe what sounded a lot like a judicial activist:

“There will be cases in which a judge’s analysis necessarily will be shaped by his or her own perspective, ethics and judgment,” the president said. “That’s why the third quality I seek in a judge is a keen understanding that justice is not about abstract legal theory, nor some footnote in a dusty casebook.”

“It’s the kind of life experience earned outside the classroom and the courtroom; experience that suggests he or she views the law not only as an intellectual exercise, but also grasps the way it affects the daily reality of people’s lives in a big, complicated democracy, and in rapidly changing times,” Obama continued. “That, I believe, is an essential element for arriving at just decisions and fair outcomes.”

In other words, cases are to be decided not impartially on the written law, and the set words of the U.S. Constitution, but based on ever-changing situation and circumstance and the predilections of judges. Why does this concern so many GOP lawmakers? As Antonin Scalia wrote in his dissent in the Obergefell v Hodges case that made same-sex marriage a right, “A system of government that makes the People subordinate to a committee of nine unelected lawyers does not deserve to be called a democracy.”