Obama: Court void will be filled
Rebutting GOP, president justifies justice nomination
RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. —As key Republicans sounded a partial retreat Tuesday from a vow to not even consider a Supreme Court nomination this year, President Barack Obama said he expected the Senate to do its duty by voting to confirm or reject the candidate he names to fill the seat of the late Justice Antonin Scalia.
Invoking the renowned conservative justice’s legal philosophy, Obama said he would follow the words and “original intent” of the Constitution by choosing a well qualified nominee, despite Republican calls that he leave the decision until after the election so his successor can fill the seat.
The president said he was “amused” that Republicans who call themselves “strict interpreters of the Constitution” are suddenly citing unwritten precedent about not confirming justices during an election year to justify their position.
“It’s pretty hard to find that in the Constitution,” Obama said during a news conference in Rancho Mirage, following a two-day summit of southeast Asian leaders. “The Constitution is pretty clear about what is supposed to happen now.”
Obama acknowledged that Scalia’s replacement could change the balance of the court, but he challenged Republicans to put aside partisan considerations.
“It’s the one court where we would expect elected officials to rise above day topolitics, and this will be the opportunity for senators to do their job,” the president said. “I expect them to hold hearings. I expect there to be a vote. Full stop.”
Obama’s comments came hours after two key Senate Republicans voiced reservations about Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s suggestion over the weekend that there should be no nomination process during an election year.
Strategists said Republican leaders may have made a tactical mistake that could trigger a public backlash.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, the 82-year old Iowa Republican who chairs the Judiciary Committee, told reporters Tuesday he might be open to holding hearings on Obama’s nominee.
“I would wait until the nominee is made before I would make any decisions. ... In other words, take it a step at a time,” he said in Iowa.
North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis warned that if Republicans rejected an Obama nominee “sight unseen” they would “fall into the trap of being obstructionists.”
Three days earlier, Grassley had insisted the “standard practice” was not to confirm new Supreme Court justices in an election year.
“It only makes sense that we defer to the American people who will elect a new president” in November, he said Saturday.
Legal experts, however, cite more than a half dozen examples since 1900 of justices being confirmed during a presidential election year.
Grassley was among the 97 senators who voted unanimously to confirm Justice Anthony Kennedy in February of 1988, thefinal year of President Ronald Reagan’s term. He filled a vacancy that arose in June of 1987 when Justice Lewis Powell retired. Reagan chose Kennedy in late November after Judge Robert Bork was defeated in the Senate.
Obama said that there is nothing in the Constitution to suggest the president’s nominee should not be considered and voted on in his last year in the White House.
“Historically, this has not been viewed as a question,” he said.
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said the Senate’s tradition was to approve qualified “mainstream candidates.”
“Every single senator has a right to vote no on any given nominee,” Schumer said in a statement. “... But the wisdom of the Founding Fathers dictates that we should go through a full vetting and confirmation process so that we and the nation can determine whether these candidates are out of the mainstream even in this ideological era.”
White House aides say the president and his team have just begun to consider nominees for the high court, and they do not expect an announcement for at least severalweeks.