The death last week of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the pending nomination of her replacement on the Supreme Court has thrown a hand grenade into the 2020 election. Focus quickly turned to whether enough Republican senators would support a confirmation vote to ensure a majority. Colorado U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner provided his answer on Monday, signaling that, yes, he would indeed vote to confirm a qualified nominee who meets essential criteria for elevation to the high court.

Specifically, Gardner’s statement on the matter said the following: “When a president exercises constitutional authority to nominate a judge for the Supreme Court vacancy, the Senate must decide how to best fulfill its constitutional duty of advice and consent. I have and will continue to support judicial nominees who will protect our Constitution, not legislate from the bench, and uphold the law. Should a qualified nominee who meets this criteria be put forward, I will vote to confirm.”

To some, he might as well have said he was supporting martial law, cannibalism and nuclear testing in Boulder.

The opprobrium leveled at the president, for daring to submit a nominee, and the Senate Republicans, for daring to suggest they would vote on a nominee, has come to be expected whenever a seat on the Supreme Court opens up. The ostensible issue, Democrats make pains to point out, is one of propriety; back in 2016, President Obama’s pick to replace Justice Scalia, Merrick Garland, was denied a hearing by the Republican-controlled Senate, citing the nearness of the election. The same standard, they tell us, should apply now.

I will give them this: the proximity of the election ought not to have been offered up as the principal reason for denying Garland’s confirmation. The reason was that the Senate has a constitutional prerogative to confirm SCOTUS appointees, and Garland fell short of the criteria the Senate majority felt necessary to be elevated to the bench. Everyone involved did their part — the president put forth a nominee, as was his right, and the Senate, the majority of which was in the party opposite the president, elected to not confirm him, as was their right.

Four years later, the circumstances have changed, though the applicable rights and duties have not. This time both the president and Senate majority are hitting for the same team, and, presuming the president nominates someone qualified whose juridical philosophy aligns with that of the Senate majority, that person will likely be confirmed.

This makes the Democrats very unhappy, especially since they view the Supreme Court not so much as a judicial institution but as an instrument for irreversible social change. They juxtapose Gardner’s opposition to Garland’s confirmation under Obama to his support for a potential confirmation now and see hypocrisy.

This brings up a couple of observations. The first is that hypocrisy, if that’s what it is, works both ways. We have heard from disappointed Democrats for four years about how Garland’s nomination was “stolen” insofar as his confirmation ought to have proceeded, pending election or no pending election. Fair enough. But if fealty to consistency is what they are proposing, should they not hold to the same standard now, and support the confirmation of whomever President Trump puts forward? If it is hypocritical for Republicans to reverse course, as the Democrats are telling us they are doing, is it not equally hypocritical for Democrats to do the same?

Consistency of position is probably rarer in terms of Supreme Court appointments than in any other field of public endeavor, and that’s saying something. The reason for this is simple: the Supreme Court has, over the past 50 years or so, self-appointed itself as, to use the words of Justice Learned Hand, a third legislative chamber. This makes appointment to the bench a political act, subject to political formulations.

The fact is that, politically, legally, or historically, there is no inconsistency in Gardner’s position on SCOTUS confirmation between 2016 and today. The Senate and the president have the same constitutionally assigned roles now as they did then. Gardner’s decision to exercise that role has changed to the extent that orbiting circumstances have. In both cases, Gardner supports the confirmation of justices to the Supreme Court who respect the authorities of Congress and the executive, and the limits of their own. If President Trump nominates a candidate who meets those standards — someone, for instance, like Judge Amy Coney Barrett — Gardner would be doing the right thing, and the nation a great service, in voting to confirming her.