More precisely, they embraced a fourth-term Sen. Biden chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time and said that should a Supreme Court vacancy arise, then-President George H.W. Bush shouldn’t nominate a replacement until after that fall’s presidential election.
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President Obama has said he plans to nominate a justice to replace Antonin Scalia in the coming weeks.
“To leave the seat vacant at this critical moment in American history is a little bit like saying, ‘God forbid something happen to the president and the vice president, we’re not going to fill the presidency for another year and a half, ‘ ” he told Minnesota Public Radio on Thursday. Nonetheless, the same dynamic is at play: Biden and McConnell, career politicians, are (or, in the case of Biden, will be) reversing old arguments now that they find themselves forced to hold the opposite position they once did.
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. The current Judiciary Committee chairman, Sen. R-Iowa, came to the Senate floor Monday afternoon to deliver fulsome praise for Biden and the newly-unearthed speech.
“The Senate, too, Mr. President, must consider how it would respond to a Supreme Court vacancy that would occur in the full throes of an election year”.
In a closing shot, Grassley said if Obama makes a nomination, as is expected, Biden, “the man who sat at a desk across the aisle and at the back of the chamber for more than 35 years, knows what the Senate should do”.
Joe Biden addresses the Senate in 1992. “That would not be our intention”, he said.
Biden goes on to defend his opinion as not based on partisan politics, but a “pragmatic conclusion” that election campaigning affects such an appointment.
“I also recognize my duty as a senator to either vote in support or opposition to that nominee following a fair and thorough hearing along with a complete and transparent release of all requested information”, Kirk wrote.
In fact, he said that if President Bush put forward a nominee, the Judiciary Committee – his committee – should “seriously consider not scheduling confirmation hearings on the nomination until after the political campaign season is over”. “This is about who chooses”. But Earnest declined to offer specifics on the timeline or whom Obama is considering.
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“The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice”, McConnell said in a statement following Scalia’s death.
