Then you're back in the 1800s. But we routinely look back to the 1800s to establish what is accepted practice in our government.
The number of qualifications needed in order to establish this "precedent" should tip you off that it's manufactured expressly to gain a political advantage.
Correct, no one is actually surprised that Mitch McConnell abandoned the flimsy justification for his power grab the instant it outlived its use to him.
Alternatively, McConnell could have called the vote and the Republican majority in the Senate could have just voted it down.
Pre-nuclear option (an actual example of a power grab) even a minority of Senators could stop a nominee from getting through. The Republicans had a majority.
It can't be assumed that there wouldn't be Republican defections on a Garland confirmation. This is exactly the reason the majority leader refused to allow a vote. Even now, a number of Republican Senators have already "defected" and declared they won't vote on a nominee before the 2021 inauguration.
Routinely?
This sounds a lot like "originalism", which is controversial at best.
So no, I won't cite something else.
The National Review article links to the source data, data from CRS and data from senate.gov. CRS is the Congressional Research Service.
Think of it as a trial. Liberal leaning media is the prosecutor and conservative media is the defendant. Depending on the topic, these roles are reversed.
> History supports Republicans filling the seat. Doing so would not be in any way inconsistent with Senate Republicans’ holding open the seat vacated by Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016. The reason is simple, and was explained by Mitch McConnell at the time. Historically, throughout American history, when their party controls the Senate, presidents get to fill Supreme Court vacancies at any time — even in a presidential election year, even in a lame-duck session after the election, even after defeat. Historically, when the opposite party controls the Senate, the Senate gets to block Supreme Court nominees sent up in a presidential election year, and hold the seat open for the winner. Both of those precedents are settled by experience as old as the republic.
The linked article actually goes on to describe every situation where there was an election year Supreme Court vacancy. Please read.