Texas Sen. Ted Cruz on Sunday seized on the sudden death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia to suggest that billionaire Donald Trump could not be trusted to pick a rock-solid conservative replacement.

Cruz made his comments on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” as he and Trump turned up the rhetoric with the pivotal South Carolina primary now less thank a week away.

“If Donald Trump becomes president, the Second Amendment will be written out of the Constitution, because it is abundantly clear that Donald Trump is not a conservative,” he said. “He will not invest the capital to confirm a conservative. And so the result is the same. Whether it’s Hillary (Clinton), Bernie (Sanders) or Donald Trump, the Second Amendment will go away.”

Trump fired back on the same program, calling the allegation “absolutely false.” He tried to turn the tables on Cruz over his support for Chief Justice John Roberts, who provided the deciding vote to uphold the Affordable Care Act in two separate cases.

“He got there because Ted Cruz pushed him like wild … So Cruz shouldn’t be talking, because that was among the worse appointments I’ve sever seen,” he said. “We have Obamacare because of Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush and George Bush.”

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As he did in Saturday’s raucous debate, Trump suggested appellate Judge Diane Sykes as a suitable replacement.

On “Meet the Press,” Cruz offered his own example of someone who would make an ideal justice — Mike Luttig, a former appellate court judge who once clerked for Scalia. Cruz said he does not have a litmus test on specific issues but would look for someone with a long, proven track record of adhering to the strict meaning of the Constitution. He said Roberts failed that test.

“He didn’t have a track record, and I would not have nominated John Roberts,” he said. “Once George Bush nominated him, I supported the nomination as a Republican nominee.”

Despite the sniping, the Republican presidential candidates remained united in the view that the Senate must block President Obama from picking Scalia’s successor.

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Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that it was “not important” to him whether Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell schedules a vote on an Obama nominee. But he said the Senate should reject it one way or another.

“Given his choices of Supreme Court justices in the past, the Senate of the United States should not confirm someone who is out of the mainstream,” Bush said.

Other candidates took a harder line, arguing the Senate should not even consider a nomination before the next president takes office.

Cruz on multiple shows talked of an 80-year tradition of presidents not nominating justices in their last year in office. He said the vacancy should be part of the 2016 election.

On “Fox News Sunday,” Florida Sen. Marco Rubio agreed.

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“The president can nominate whoever he wants, but the Senate’s not going to act, and that’s pretty clear,” he said. “So we can be debating it, but we’re not moving forward on it.”

Ohio Gov. John Kasich said on “This Week” that the American people should use their vote for president to send a signal about what the direction the closely divided high court should go.

“People will, in a very unusual way, indirectly sort of pick the next judge of — justice of the Supreme Court,” he said.

Democrats argued vigorously that Obama has a constitutional right to fill the vacancy and that the Senate has a constitutional obligation to consider it.

“The idea that Republicans want to deny the president of the United States his basic constitutional right is beyond my comprehension,” Sen. Sanders said on “Face the Nation.”

His fellow senator from Vermont, Pat Leahy, warned on the same program that blocking Obama would hurt Republicans politically.

“If the Republican leadership refuses to even hold a hearing, I think that is going to guarantee they lose control of the Senate, because I don’t think the American people will stand for that,” he said.

But Cruz said on “Meet the Press” that the Senate is under no obligation to vote on a nominee by Obama.

“The Senate’s duty is to advise and consent,” he said. “The Senate is advising right now.”