Ted Cruz and by becoming the first Republican senator to support President Barack Obama’s clean power plan. “In some ways, this argument is just an extension of what we’ve seen in the Senate, generally”.
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Obama and the Democratic senators who joined him in filibustering Alito “should have been in the position where they were making a public case” against the merits of his nomination to the high court instead, Earnest said.
Speculation abounds as to whom Obama will nominate for Scalia’s place, as many Republicans demand that the nomination take place after the new president takes office next year.
Obama is pushing ahead anyway.
“The fact that the court has eight members is not an unprecedented thing”, he said, according to The Dallas Morning News.
Mr. Obama has vowed to submit a nominee, and Senate Democrats are working furiously to portray Mr. McConnell and other Republicans as obstructionists. The pick, he says, should come from the next president.
“I think we fall into the trap… of being obstructionists”, Sen.
Efforts to replace Scalia have devolved into a massive political dogfight, involving a wide array of interest groups on all sides of the US political spectrum.
As NPR’s Nina Totenberg reports, the Obamas will pay their respects to Scalia this afternoon, after the visitation by the general public has begun. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania said that, barring an unlikely Obama decision to nominate someone in Scalia’s mold who wouldn’t change the court’s balance, it is clear Obama won’t get a nominee confirmed this year. A court spokeswoman said Scalia’s body will lie in repose at the Supreme Court building on Friday.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters Obama would draw on Biden’s perspective, noting the vice president had served as Senate Judiciary Committee chairman and presided over confirmation hearings for past Supreme Court nominees.
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John Green, director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron, predicted the Supreme Court vacancy could “cut both ways” in states that have competitive Senate races.
