Garland was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia by Clinton’s husband, Bill, in 1997.
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Missouri Senator Roy Blunt says he will not support the nomination.
There’s been plenty of sound and fury over President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee-and in the end, the great likelihood is that nothing will happen. They don’t have concerns so much about Garland as a Justice, but they just believe that Presidents stop working in the fourth year of their terms, per McConnell’s silly argument.
It is painfully obvious why the Republican-controlled Senate refuses to confirm a court nominee.
Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) has suggested he would be open to meeting with Garland and has said that, if a Democrat were elected President in November, he would want the Senate to consider Garland’s nomination during a post-election, lame-duck session.
“I can’t imagine that a Republican majority in the United States Senate would want to confirm, in a lame-duck session, a nominee opposed by the National Rifle Association, the National Federation of Independent Business that represents small businesses”, McConnell said on Fox. This not-so-thinly-veiled threat is a poor choice, because it shows that McConnell and other Republicans in the Senate are willing to greatly increase partisanship to get their way.
Charles Chamberlain, head of the liberal group Democracy for America, said in a statement it was “deeply disappointing” that Obama “put forward a nominee seemingly created to appease intransigent Republicans rather than inspire the grass roots he’ll need to get that nominee through the Senate”.
But Mitch McConnell will ignore the people’s will as he talks out of the other side of his mouth and claims he is doing this unprecedented thing out of concern for the people. “I don’t know why McConnell has done this to his senators”. “He’s marching these men, women over a cliff, and I don’t think they’re going to go”. “I started my interview with Harry Reid with a similar quote from him, back during the Bush years too”.
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“As you know, before we announced him people were saying they would not even dare to meet with him”, McDonough said. Just because it is their job does not mean they have to appoint whatever Justice the Supreme Court nominates – it only means that they have to at least consider the nominee. Judge Garland has sat on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals for 19 years, is well respected and is proving a major headache for Republican lawmakers, which many argue was exactly the point. So before the next Senate takes office in January, Republicans would quickly confirm Garland and cut their losses. The nomination was made public on Wednesday.
