If a Democrat wins, the Senate could confirm Garland or await a pick from Hillary Clinton or Sanders. It should not change the political calculus of the Republican majority to keep Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat open until the November elections.
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Judge Merrick B. Garland speaks in the Rose Garden of the White House after being nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Barack Obama.
“The American people may well elect a president who decides to nominate Judge Garland for Senate consideration”, McConnell said last Wednesday. But he said the meeting would be as a courtesy to Judge Merrick Garland and not as a nominee.At the same time, I bet there are a few Republicans who are willing to roll the dice on centrist nominees, yet when it comes to the Second Amendment; Garland teeters on either end of the fence.
He called out two of his former colleagues, senators Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, and Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, in particular, laughing off their assertions that the Supreme Court could function temporarily with only eight justices.
“This is about principle, not the person the president has nominated”, he said.
The Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund said its grassroots activists in Kansas are “furious” that Moran is willing to hold hearings on Garland’s nomination.
Underscoring the state’s long-time economic dependence on the fading coal industry, one speaker, veteran John Koch of Charleston, told Manchin: “Oppose this, don’t even meet with the guy, or anybody else that Obama puts up” until there’s a truce in the “war on coal”.
“If they want to vote against Judge Garland, that’s certain their prerogative…I’m hopeful the Senate will come to its senses and do what we are supposed to do”.
“It’s disrespectful to to President Obama, disrespectful to the presidency, and disrespectful to the Constitution”, Brown said.
Another group fighting against Garland’s confirmation, the Judicial Crisis Network, said it was preparing ads against Moran, according to the Topeka Capital Journal. Eighty percent of Democrats polled feel that Garland should be approved, while only 26 percent of Republicans are in support of President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee. Among Independents, 48 percent wanted a vote for Garland. It was only in this latter part of the speech – which, again, discussed what should happen after the next election – that Biden said that presidents and the Senate should work together to fill court vacancies with moderate nominees. He has reached out to some Republican senators, and he has pressed the issue while campaigning for Democrats in Seattle and Ohio.
So far, three Republican senators have broken with the GOP leadership’s position of blocking a vote on Garland. Sen.
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David Christensen, lobbying for the anti-abortion Family Research Council, said Moran had earned a ideal score in the group’s rating of lawmakers’ votes previous year and said, “Now we have this extremely important Supreme Court debate, and now is not the time for him to go wobbly”.
