Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s body was barely cold on Saturday before Republican leaders made clear that they had no intention of allowing President Obama to fill his seat on the nation’s highest court.
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Mr. Obama blasted Republicans who say he has no right to nominate someone and say the Senate shouldn’t consider a nominee until the next president is sworn in.
President Obama promises to nominate an “indisputably” qualified candidate to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court, urging the Republican Senate to rise above “venom and rancor” and give that nominee a vote. Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of that committee, left the door open to holding hearings on a nominee Tuesday, telling reporters: “I would wait until the nomination is made before I would make any decisions”. Discussions have already begun internally at the White House and with key senators but those conversations remain at a preliminary phase, and a senior administration official said Tuesday that they would ramp up once the president returns from California after the summit he hosted with ASEAN leaders. “I intend to do my job until January 2017 and I expect them to do their job”.
Sen. Thom Tillis, North Carolina Republican, voiced caution about blocking any Obama nominee automatically. Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida have vowed to block any Obama nominee, saying the next president should select Justice Scalia’s replacement.
You’ve likely also read archival quotes from the President George W. Bush era illustrating that Republican and Democratic leaders then had almost opposite views of presidential prerogative and Senate obstructionism from the views they’re espousing today. A spokesperson for the U.S. Marshals Service said he appeared to die of natural causes. “The president is presumably elected by the people to carry out a program and altering the ideological directions of the Supreme Court would seem to be a perfectly legitimate part of a presidential platform”. “That’s what I said then, that’s what I believe now, and that’s what I hope happens in the months ahead”. This gives the Republicans leverage to negotiate a centrist, rather than a leftist, nominee from the president by bargaining for a confirmation during Obama’s final year. But that’s assuming Sanders wants to break with Obama on the Supreme Court just as he is trying to appeal to African-American voters in the South.
As Obama cast the dispute over filling the seat of the late Justice Antonin Scalia as a test of whether the Senate could function, there were early signs that Republican resistance could be eroding.
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“I expect them to hold hearings”. Senator Mark Kirk, up for re-election in Obama’s home state of IL, issued a statement calling debate so soon after Scalia’s death “unseemly”. If there’s virtually no chance of Republicans bending, Obama might go another route – picking a nominee who galvanizes support among the Democrats’ liberal base and fires up interest groups in the election year. He won confirmation on a 98-0 vote to become the first Italian-American to sit on the Supreme Court. “In other words, take it a step at a time”.
