Defeating The Nominee

This is a weird sentence about the Supreme Court vacancy and getting it filled:

On Capitol Hill, Republicans acknowledged the long odds they faced to defeat the eventual nominee unless Obama makes a selection that is easily portrayed as outside the mainstream of legal thinking.

Is that the Republicans' only goal, to defeat every nominee who comes along? So what if they had their way, we'd still have three or four vacancies on the Supreme Court by the time Obama's years were over? That's a weird thing to say.

I mean, really, they can't filibuster it for close to eight years, can they? And any other vacancies that come along.