Different stance on court pick by Cornyn
WASHINGTON — If a Supreme Court vacancy opens up this year, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn says, the Senate has a “responsibility” to consider a nomination from President Donald Trump. But in 2016, Cornyn joined the GOP in refusing to consider any Obama nominees because “the presidential election is well underway.”
With 87-year-old Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg hospitalized for gallbladder treatment this week and the high court’s term ending next month, the prospect of a possible opening has again been raised on Capitol Hill.
Senate Republicans say they’ll fill it, despite denying even a hearing for Merrick Garland, whom former President Barack Obama
nominated in March 2016, Politico reported Friday.
Among them is Cornyn, who told Politico that “if you thought the Kavanaugh hearing was contentious, this would probably be that on steroids.”
“Nevertheless,” Cornyn said, “if the president makes a nomination, then it’s our responsibility to take it up.”
But in February 2016, Cornyn signed a letter with other GOP members of the Senate Judiciary Committee refusing to hold any hearings on Obama nominees to fill the vacancy left by the death of Antonin Scalia.
“The presidential election is well underway,” the letter said. “The American people are presented with an exceedingly rare opportunity to decide, in a very real and concrete way, the direction the Court will take over the next generation. We believe The People should have this opportunity.”
“The president may nominate judges of the Supreme Court,” the letter said. “But the power to grant, or withhold, consent to such nominees rests exclusively with the United States Senate.”
A Cornyn aide said Friday that this election is different and that the senator’s views have not actually changed. Obama couldn’t run again in 2016, and the Senate was controlled by a different party than the White House. It has been more than a century since the Senate confirmed an electionyear nominee by a president from a different party.
Since 1900, there were only six times a Supreme Court vacancy popped up in a presidential election year before 2016: in 1968, 1956, 1940, 1932, 1916 and 1912, according to the New York Times. In four of those years, the president’s party also controlled the Senate, which successfully confirmed the nominee, according to the Times.
“You’d have to go back to the 1880s to find the last time a vacancy on the Supreme Court occurring during a presidential election year was confirmed by a Senate of a different party than the president,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in a Fox News interview in February. McConnell has said blocking Garland’s nomination was one of his “proudest moments.
“That was the situation in 2016,” McConnell said. “That would not be the situation in 2020.”
“If you thought the Kavanaugh hearing was contentious, this would probably be that on steroids.”
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, speaking to Politico