GOP divisionSen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., right, meets with Judge Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama’s choice to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, becoming the only Republican senator to meet the embattled nominee, Tuesday, March 29, 2016, on Capitol Hill in Washington.
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“It turns out that if the process is fair and you are saying that it’s important that our courts are reflective of a changing society, you’ll end up with a really good cross-section of people who are excellent and that’s who we’ve been able to appoint”, Obama said.
Some Republican senators have started to meet with Garland and called for hearings on his nomination, but McConnell, who controls the chamber’s legislative agenda, said this week, “It’s safe to say there will not be hearings or votes”.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. said Thursday that Obama will continue to wrongly argue that the Constitution requires the Senate to have a vote on his nominee.
The next step in the process of elevating someone to the Supreme Court typically has the nominee answering questions during hearings by the Senate Judiciary Committee, before the panel’s members vote on whether to forward the nomination to the floor for a confirmation vote by the full Senate. Rather than rolling up their sleeves and considering Chief Judge Merrick Garland’s record for themselves, Republicans have outsourced their job to moneyed interest groups whose only goal is to smear the nominee’s admirable record of public service. In a memo circulated Wednesday, the junior senator from Highland Park said he “had a positive conversation” with the Lincolnwood native and urged his fellow Republican colleagues to do the same.
“Many have disagreements with Chuck… and you can explain those disagreements without being slanderous or libelous”, he said.
On Thursday, Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, announced he would have a courtesy meeting with Garland.
“If it becomes apparent somewhere down the line that the next president might be a Democrat, they may want to think about the kind of nominee that he or she might send to us, as compared to this nominee”, Carper said. Nominated for a lifetime appointment to the second-highest court in the land, they viewed Estrada as young, smart and conservative, and Republicans seemed to be “grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment”, according to a Democratic aide. “The opportunity to win back the White House, to secure the Republican Senate Majority and influence the direction of the Supreme Court for the next generation”.
President Barack Obama arrives in Chicago Thursday.
At the school where he used to teach constitutional law, President Obama declared today that “in some ways the judicial process is a casualty of some broader trends in our democracy”. “We’ll wait four more years, to see the next president who comes in”.
Graham, a member of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, quickly joined that chorus, saying there was nothing the White House could do to compel him to confront his party leadership and demand that lawmakers advance Garland’s nomination.
Republican resistance thus far remains strong overall.
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By taking the argument to the prestigious law school where he once taught constitutional law, Obama made a doctrinal argument while also touting his personal credentials to do so. “What it says to me is that there’s a fear that if they have hearings, it will be hard to not give the nominee a vote and perhaps seat them”.
