US President Barack Obama has pledged to pick an indisputably qualified nominee for the Supreme Court as he lashed out at Republicans who threatened to block him from filling the key vacancy for which three Indian-Americans could be the possible candidates.
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Obama – speaking at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Leaders Summit in California- extended “heartfelt condolences” to the family of Scalia, whom he called, “a giant on the Supreme Court”.
While acknowledging the political stakes of a nomination and the pressure Republican senators were under in the election year, Obama said the Supreme Court nomination should come above partisan rivalry.
Sen. Ted Cruz, the Texan who has practiced before the high court and is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, has vowed to filibuster any nominee.
He said there was “more than enough time” for the Senate to hold hearings and vote on his nominee without the White House needing to resort to a procedure known as a recess appointment to get around the Senate when it is not in session.
Regardless of anticipated resistance from the right, Obama said he intends “to nominate, in due time, a very well-qualified candidate”.
On Saturday, Vice President Joe Biden and his wife Dr. Jill Biden will attend Scalia’s funeral mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.
Tellingly, the senators didn’t say whether Obama’s nominee should at least get a hearing – just that they’d be justified in refusing an up-or-down vote. “Elections have consequences because we have a Republican Senate”.
Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, told a local radio station he would not rule out holding hearings on a potential Obama nominee, even as he maintained it “only makes sense” that the next president be left to choose. “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court justice”, he said.
“Does the president plan to travel to the court on Friday when Justice Scalia will lie in repose or to attend the funeral on Saturday?” a reporter asked Earnest.
McConnell and Grassley noted that under a Republican president Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said that nowhere in the Constitution “does it say the Senate has a duty to give presidential nominees a vote”.
The difference between Democrats” filibuster then and the one Republicans are promising now, though, he said, is Democrats’ was based on “substance’.
But Obama argued that “the Supreme Court’s different”.
“There’s no unwritten law that says that it can only be done in off years”.
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Hillary, in response to a question on whether she regrets voting against cloture on Alito’s nomination, said, “The nomination was made, and we went through the process, and what the Republicans today are saying is, ‘You can’t vote on anything”.
