GOP SETS DATE TO CONFIRM BARRETT TO COURT
McConnell declares ‘we have the votes’ in Senate, eyes Oct. 23
Senate Republicans moved ahead with unusual speed Thursday to fulfill their promise to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, ignoring objections from Democrats to cement a 6-3 conservative majority before the November election.
In a partisan clash that previewed future fights, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, forced through a motion to schedule the panel’s vote on Barrett’s nomination for Oct. 22. That would be just over a month after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’s death created the vacancy and less than two weeks before Election Day.
In doing so, he conceded that President Donald Trump was in danger of losing the White House, underscoring the political stakes of the fight and its potential consequences for the president and for
Republicans’ hopes of keeping control of the Senate.
Speaking in Kentucky, where he had just cast his own ballot, Sen. Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, left little doubt about what would happen next. The full Senate, he told reporters, would begin considering Barrett’s confirmation Oct. 23.
“We have the votes,” he said flatly.
In the hearing room where the Judiciary Committee spent more than 20 tense hours with Barrett this week, outraged Democrats used some of their last remaining procedural levers to try to slow Republicans’ progress — while warning the majority party of dire consequences for what they called an illegitimate process. They briefly denied the committee the quorum it needed to conduct business and forced a vote to postpone the proceedings.
Republicans overcame both setbacks, ignoring the quorum requirement and easily defeating the request for a delay. Democrats conceded they had no real power to block the ascension of Barrett, a 48-year-old appeals court judge and Notre Dame law professor.
“I recognize, Mr. Chairman, that this goose is pretty much cooked,” said Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J.
With a vote locked in place, Republicans appeared to have few — if any — remaining hurdles before them in a history-making dash to achieve a long-sought conservative-leaning court that could reconsider landmark rulings on abortion, gay rights, corporate power and the Affordable Care Act.
No Supreme Court confirmation has occurred as close to an election as the one scheduled for Barrett. In this case, millions of Americans have already cast their ballots.
Democrats cited that fact frequently as they forced a raw and unusually substantive debate among Judiciary Committee members over the state of Washington’s judicial wars, and of the Senate itself. While the questioning of Barrett this week was marked by general civility and respect for the nominee, senators amped up their attacks on each other Thursday.
Democrats accused Republicans of a hypocritical power grab by rushing to fill a seat so close to an election, after refusing to do so in 2016, when Democrats put forward a nominee to the Supreme Court, Merrick Garland, nine months before the balloting.
“The time has come to be honest about what is going on here,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. “You are just trying to ram through this justice — against your own words, in light of everything this president has said, where he won’t even commit to a peaceful transition to power. That is the world we are in right now.”
Urging them to reverse course, Democrats warned that Republicans were setting a dangerous new precedent in an ever-escalating judicial war between the two parties that could irrevocably erode the legitimacy of the Senate and of the courts.
“This process is a caricature of illegitimacy,” said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., a former chairman of the committee. “The fact that we had a nominee before Justice Ginsburg was even buried — in order to jam this nomination through before the election — will forever mark this process as the callous, political power grab that it is.”
Republicans countered that they had every right to proceed. Unlike in 2016, when President Barack Obama was not standing for re-election and the Senate was controlled by a different party, Trump is on the ballot and his party controls the Senate. Besides, they said, Democrats would do the same if the situation was reversed.
“I recognize our Democratic friends wish there was a Democratic majority in the Senate, but the voters decided otherwise,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said. “So this committee moving forward is consistent with over 200 years of history.”
They also resurrected an earlier stage in the fight, blaming Democrats for supercharging the tit-for-tat escalation when they forced a change in Senate rules in 2013, lowering the threshold of votes needed to confirm federal judges to a simple majority.
Graham, who let the debate play out for almost two hours Thursday, conceded that his own past statements pledging not to fill a vacancy under the present scenario were fair game for Democrats. But he said his view was that voters elected a Republican president and a Republican-controlled Senate and expected them to put in place conservative judges.
The shoe, he noted, could soon be on the other foot.
“You all have a good chance of winning the White House,” Graham told the Democrats on the committee. The concession, from one of Trump’s most vocal defenders who is himself facing an unexpectedly tough reelection challenge, turned some heads.
“Thank you for acknowledging that,” Klobuchar interjected.
“I think it’s true,” Graham replied.