He said the president has sought his advice but they had yet to discuss potential candidates. Obama has vowed to select a successor to Scalia. Still, Cornyn said it was up to Grassley to decide whether to schedule a hearing, and to McConnell to decide on a full Senate vote if the Judiciary Committee were to vote on the nominee.
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Former conservative justice Sandra Day O’Connor, on the other hand, told a Fox News affiliate that someone needed to take the job and that the president should “get on with it”. “This would include information about these individuals’ record, about their professional career and their professional experience, all of which they would bring to a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court”, Earnest said at the White House press briefing.
“If you’re not going to have a vote on the person”, he said, “you don’t need to hold hearings”.
Most Republicans and likeminded groups were holding firm.
On Saturday, the news of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s death was confirmed. Scalia’s body was hardly cold and people were already going nuts and fabricating bogus “rules” out of thin air. “Because it’s bigger than that”. But Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid predicted Republicans would “cave in”.
Biden then told a story about the time he was Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee during the tenure of Ronald Reagan.
The current race for the Oval Office is the “most contentious presidential election” he’s seen in his 40 years in the Senate, Hatch says, and delaying a nomination serves the best interests of the country. The Senate is empowered to give advice and consent…. “That is very different than saying every nominee receives a vote”.
It’s hard to take such an argument seriously, and it certainly doesn’t help when an actual retired Supreme Court justice seems to have no use for the right’s talking points.
Judges Sri Srinivasan and Patricia Millett of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit paused briefly before Scalia’s casket in the Supreme Court’s Great Hall. Senators also unanimously confirmed Jane Kelly in 2013 to the St. Louis-based 8th Circuit Court of Appeals.
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Since Scalia died over the weekend, Republicans have said they plan to block Obama’s nominee, and many have added that they don’t think the president should choose a nominee at all.
