The White House says it won’t comment on Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval’s announcement that he doesn’t want to be considered for the Supreme Court.
Advertisement
President Barack Obama will convene a meeting on Tuesday with the Republican and Democratic leaders of the U.S. Senate and its Judiciary Committee to discuss a Supreme Court nominee, the White House said on Thursday.
“If Sandoval couldn’t even get a hearing from the Republicans in the Senate who else could he puts up, Democrat or someone even more liberal, how could the possibly get a hearing?” he said.
The president and his allies are pressuring Republican senators back home, aiming to make life politically uncomfortable for the lawmakers who’ve vowed that only Obama’s successor will fill the seat of the late Antonin Scalia.
A few Republicans, including McConnell, said they would not even meet with the nominee when that person makes introductions on Capitol Hill.
Democrats argue that the nation already decided that when voters twice elected Obama to serve as president until this January.
“Sandoval’s checkered history on reproductive freedom should raise some serious flags – it certainly has for us”, NARAL Pro-Choice America said in a statement.
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin says the Senate has an obligation to hold hearings whomever the Supreme Court nominee is. In November 2012, he became the first Republican governor to expand Medicaid as part of Obama’s health care law, drawing fire from conservative members of his party.
Neither party comes to the judicial wars with clean hands and moral high ground, but this outright obstructionism represents a new low in this long-running conflict.
Not fulfilling these duties could cause problems in the Supreme Court for the next 11 months and set a precedent that is sure to cause problems in the future.
He is limited to two terms as governor and is set to leave office in early 2019. He had also signed a law a year ago backed by the National Rifle Association that strengthened justified homicide’s defenses and also repealed a local Ordinance in Clark County that required handguns registration.
“We have obstruction on steroids”, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said from a lectern outside the Court on Thursday.
“My heart is here”.
Gun rights have been supported by Sandoval as a governor and this could give rise to concerns from advocates of gun-control.
But Sandoval, after initially agreeing to the vetting process, withdrew his name on Thursday.
Senate Democrats have condemned what they call “unprecedented obstruction” by the GOP majority in blocking a nominee.
Advertisement
The source said that Sandoval had expressed his interest in the job and had added that a number of people were being checked out for same.
