Republicans vow to fight Garland nomination to Supreme Court.
‘Give the people a voice,’ Senate leader says
WASHINGTON • Senate Republicans are not budging in their refusal to consider President Barack Obama’s nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court following the president naming Merrick Garland to the job.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell insisted Wednesday the Republican choice not to consider Garland, the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, was nothing personal.
“The American people may well elect a president who decides to nominate Judge Garland for Senate consideration. The next president may also nominate someone very different,” McConnell said. “Either way, our view is this: Give the people a voice in the filling of this vacancy.”
House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan said he fully supports that stand. “We should let the American people decide the direction of the court,” he said.
In announcing his choice Wednesday morning, Obama called Garland, a longtime jurist and former prosecutor, “one of America’s sharpest legal minds” and deserving of a full hearing and Senate confirmation vote.
He held up the judge as diligent public servant, highlighting his work leading the investigation into the Oklahoma City bombing and prosecutions. He quoted past praise for Garland from Chief Justice John Roberts and Sen. Orrin Hatch.
And he said Garland’s talent for bringing together “odd couples” made him a consensus candidate best poised to become an immediate force on the U. S.’s highest court.
The president urged the Republican-led Senate not to let the particularly fierce and partisan political climate quash the nomination of a “serious man.”
“This is precisely t he time when we should play it straight,” Obama said.
Garland, who had been passed over before, choked back tears, calling the nomination “the greatest honour of my life.” He described his grandparents’ flight from anti- Semitism in Eastern Europe and his modest upbringing.
He said he viewed a judge’s job as a mandate to set aside personal preferences to “follow the law, not make it.”
Garland, 63, would replace a conservative, Justice Antonin Scalia, who died last month.
A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, Garland has clerked for two appointees of Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower — the liberal Justice William Brennan Jr. as well as Judge Henry J. Friendly, for whom Chief Justice John Roberts also clerked. As a federal prosecutor, he made his reputation overseeing the investigation and prosecutions in the Oklahoma City bombing case in 1995, as well as the case against Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.
When confirmed to the D.C. Circuit in 1997, Garland won backing from a majority in both parties, including seven current Republican senators.
If confirmed for the top court, Garland would be expected to align with the more liberal judges, but he is not viewed as down the line liberal. Particularly on criminal defence and national security cases, he has earned a reputation as a centrist, and one of the few Democraticappointed judges Republicans might have a fasttracked to confirmation— under other circumstances.
Immediately after Garland’ s nomination, McConnell’ s Republican troops were toeing the same line. Moderate Republican senators who are up for re-election in swing states this November said that the choice of Garland did not shift their thinking about not holding confirmation hearings for the judge.
“I continue to believe the Senate should not move forward with the confirmation process until the people have spoken by electing a new president,” Sen. Kelly Ayotte said in a statement.
The hard-line Republican stance has sparked a passionate outcry from Democrats, who have accused Republicans of shirking their constitutional duty to consider the president’s nominee. Democrats are expected to make the Supreme Court nomination an issue for individual Republican senators on the campaign trail.
Administration officials hope t hat if vulnerable Republican senators face enough pressure, they may try to force leaders to reconsider their resistance.
Senate Democrats are counting on an early political victory in the fact that about a half-dozen Republicans haven’t completely ruled out meeting Garland and considering his nomination, according to reports.
“The ice is cracking. It’s going to crack further,” Sen. Chuck Schumer said.
Republican Sen. Jeff Flake said he would meet Garland because “I think that’s my responsibility,” adding he “would certainly prefer a pick like Garland, rather than someone Hillary Clinton might put up” if she wins the election.
Democrats also stressed that Republicans should be happy with a moderate nominee like Garland. Some Senate Republicans suspect Obama selected him over someone younger or more liberal to pressure Republicans to move his nomination.
“I think he was really trying to pick somebody that he thought at least some Senate Republicans would accept right now,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch, a member of the judiciary committee who was one of the Republicans who voted for Garland when he was nominated to the D. C. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1997.
But the current environment is too“toxic” and “politicized,” Hatch said, to consider confirming any Supreme Court nominee before the next administration.