The numbers from Pew found Democrats feel more strongly in favor (79 percent) of the Senate acting on an Obama nominee than Republicans are against it (66 percent).
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As Republicans and Democrats gird for a showdown over when and with whom to replace the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the political question is which party will benefit from the battle. The president is reviewing files of possible nominees, while Republican leaders are vowing to block anyone the president sends up.
But in a speech on the Senate floor in June 1992, Biden, then the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said there should be a different standard for a Supreme Court vacancy “that would occur in the full throes of an election year”.
In the intervening years, I have become increasingly troubled by the efforts of both parties to politicize the court.
In the end, individual senators should have to explain to Americans why they oppose or support a court nominee.
Republicans on Monday gleefully circulated grainy video of Biden laying out his thoughts on the Senate floor. That was a reference to GOP congressional gains in the 2014 midterm elections. The president should follow the example of “a majority of his predecessors” and delay naming a replacement, Biden said.
But Biden says in a statement that’s not an accurate description of his views. Biden Jr., D-Del., who, while serving in 1992 as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, delivered a 90-minute address that included a call for halting action on Supreme Court nominees in an election year.
Last week Vice President Biden told MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show that having a vacancy on the Supreme Court is a problem, “because you’re not going to get resolution, potentially, on serious issues that require resolution”. That assertion that has drawn support from almost all Republicans and irate, solid opposition from Democrats.
Fast-forward 24 years, and now Vice President Biden is making the opposite argument, saying the Senate should work with President Obama to determine a nominee.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said she favored Judiciary Committee hearings “so that there can be an in-depth vetting of the nominee and his or her views”. Grassley also is up for re-election in November.
He basically wrote the playbook for how to “bork” a nominee, a descriptive verb that now means to publicly pillory a nominee’s reputation to make it politically hard for senators to vote for him.
“Senate consideration of a nominee under these circumstances is not fair to the president, to the nominee, or to the Senate itself”, he continued.
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“It’s really up to Sen”.
