Check out our slate of Daily Kos-endorsed candidates

Here's an irony: Republicans dearly loved Nino Scalia's strict construction of the Constitution, but now that he's gone, they've creatively re-interpreted Article II, section 1 to conclude that "four" actually means "three" and therefore the final year of Barack Obama's term doesn't count. But while Mitch McConnell can refuse to allow a vote on a replacement for Scalia for as long as the GOP holds a majority in the Senate, he can't protect his fellow party members who are up for re-election this year from the political assault that's about to engulf them if they embrace their leader's unprecedented obstructionism.

That's why several of the most vulnerable Republican senators have so far kept their mouths shut about the whole thing, including Rob Portman (Ohio), Pat Toomey (Pennsylvania), and Mark Kirk (Illinois), who's usually awful when it comes to staying on message. They're going to have to say something substantive at some point, though.

But at least a couple of Republicans aren't waiting and have already decided to lash themselves to McConnell's mast, whatever hell may come their way. Wisconsin's Ron Johnson, one of the dimmest senators in the GOP caucus, is leading the way, declaring that "the American people should decide the future direction of the Supreme Court by their votes for president and the majority party in the U.S. Senate." Johnson has never seemed to grasp that he represents a blue-tilting swing state, and he often sounds more like a senator from the Deep South. His decision to embrace maximum recalcitrance is therefore unsurprising, and it only gives his Democratic challenger, former Sen. Russ Feingold, another juicy line of attack.

New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte, though, is not someone you'd expect to blindly follow McConnell and Johnson, since she's long tried to cultivate a more moderate image. But while most of her efforts in service of this goal have been decidedly small beer, she's nevertheless infuriated conservatives, for whom a single apostasy is rarely forgivable. If she's still concerned about a threatened primary challenge on her right, perhaps that's why she's now saying that "the Senate should not move forward with the confirmation process until the American people have spoken by electing a new president."

That stance, however, can only hurt her in the general election, when she'll face live fire from her Democratic opponent. Gov. Maggie Hassan actually beat Ayotte to the punch with a statement saying that it would be "completely unacceptable, and a clear sign of Washington's dysfunction" if the Senate left Scalia's seat vacant for an entire year. That's a much more potent message than Ayotte's process-based argle-bargle, and it’s ready-made for attack ads.

There are still a number of other Republicans in hotly contested Senate races we need to hear from—including John McCain—and we'll be keeping close track of whatever they have to say about filling Scalia's seat on the Supreme Court. The Republicans' Senate majority was already at risk this year; now, the party's slavish devotion to maximizing its own partisan advantage is only going to place the GOP in further jeopardy.