“During my career on the Judiciary Committee, I ensured the prompt and fair consideration of nine Supreme Court Justices and the current Senate has a constitutional duty to do the same”, he said.
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It wouldn’t be prudent, Biden said, for Bush to nominate someone to the Supreme Court during what he predicted would be “one of the bitterest, dirtiest presidential campaigns we have seen in modern times”. “When you look at his decisions – in particular, during times of war – we need a court that is independent and is going to provide some check on the executive branch”, said Obama. “In this case, the Senate will withhold it”, McConnell said on the Senate floor.
The situations aren’t 1:1 facsimiles: Biden was speaking in June of 1992, whereas McConnell will now be arguing against a nominee put forth by Obama in February or March of this year.
Grassley closed his statement by saying: “If the President of the United States insists on submitting a nominee under these circumstances, Senator Biden, my friend from DE, the man who sat at a desk across the aisle and at the back of this Chamber for more than 35 years, knows what the Senate should do”.
A fierce political battle is underway between Congressional Democrats and Republicans over whether President Obama should present the Senate with a nominee, with even the 2016 presidential candidates weighing in on replacing the former more conservative justice. A recent poll by the Pew Research Center, however, does show a majority of Americans believe the Senate, at the very least, should hold hearings on a potential Obama Supreme Court choice.
A McConnell aide said that the meeting will meet in the Capitol shortly before Republicans host their Tuesday lunch.
Republican leaders on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee said Tuesday they wouldn’t hold hearings on a nominee from President Barack Obama. Biden made the statements in 1992, when Biden was Senate Judiciary Committee chairman. They were strategizing over how to maximize pressure on Republican senators, including Ayotte, Kirk and three others seeking re-election in states Obama won in both 2008 and 2012: Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley had previously left open the possibility of convening hearings once Obama nominates a justice. “It is the duty of the Senate, under the Constitution, to give our advice and give our consent or withhold our consent”. “The Senate too, must decide how it must respond to a Supreme Court vacancy that would occur in the full throes of an election year”.
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While GOP lawmakers weigh their options, conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt signaled that many in the party’s base are willing to pay any price to keep a liberal off the bench. The history of Supreme Court nominations is dominated by tales of picks the Senate debat…
