The Senate, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have refused to consider any of the president’s nominees, insisting the duty to nominate falls on the next president.
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“He made a very moderate nomination, this isn’t someone at all far to the left”, associate professor of constitutional democracy in the James Madison College Benjamin Kleinerman said.
Cochran and Sen. Roger Wicker joined other Senate Republicans in vowing not to act on any nominee submitted by President Obama.
President Barack Obama nominated the federal appeals courts judge to replace Antonin Scalia, who died during a hunting trip to Texas in February.
“He’s a judge who’s uniformly, among Republicans and Democrats, seen as somebody with the kind of temperament and the kind of excellence that should be represented on the Supreme Court”, Mr. McDonough said of Judge Garland. Cruz said Garland is just another liberal, pro-abortion nominee and he said the Senate should not vote on his nomination.
GOP leaders want the next president to make the choice; they don’t want Obama to have the opportunity to change the ideological balance of the court before he leaves office. “I will concede”, said Sen. Nineteen years ago he was also confirmed by the Republican-led senate 76 to 23 for the D.C. Court of Appeals.
“He is a good man, but he shouldn’t be brought up in this toxic environment”, Hatch told reporters Wednesday.
Garland’s supporters argue he is the nominee that the senators couldn’t refuse even in a contentious environment, according to CNN. “I would rather have a less-liberal nominee like Merrick Garland than a nominee that Hillary Clinton if she were president would put forward”.
Cotton said he believed that considering Garland before the election would deny voters the chance to weigh in on the court’s direction.
The Senate should schedule hearings on Garland’s nomination.
“He has proven himself to be a respected juris during his tenure on the district court”, said Elizabeth Wydra, with Constitutional Accountability. “That means to me Justice Garland looks at each individual case and there is no political pattern to his decisions”, Trasvina said.
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Thompson cited Senate support for Garland’s confirmation in 1997.
