The White House tried to defuse Republican charges of hypocrisy against US President Barack Obama over Supreme Court nominees on Wednesday, as liberal activists swung into action and the top Senate Democrat predicted a Republican “cave-in.”
The White House turned up the heat on the Republican-led Senate to allow fair hearings and a timely vote on Obama’s impending selection to fill the court vacancy left by Saturday’s death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia.
The Democratic president’s nominee could change the balance of power in the top US court — Scalia’s death left it with four conservative and four liberal justices — and a monumental fight is brewing over Obama’s pick for the lifetime appointment.
Republicans, led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have said Scalia’s seat should remain vacant until Obama’s successor takes office in January next year so that voters can have a say in the selection when they cast their ballots in the Nov. 8 presidential election. The Senate must confirm any Supreme Court nominee.
“I, first of all, think that they’re going to cave in,” Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, speaking in Reno, Nevada, said of the Republicans. “I think the president’s going to give us a nominee that’s a good one, and I think they’re going to have to hold hearings and have a vote.”
Obama has argued the Senate has a constitutional duty to consider his nominee.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest was put on the defensive over Obama’s actions a decade ago as a member of the Senate when he tried to block the nomination put forward by his predecessor in the White House, Republican George W. Bush, of conservative Samuel Alito to the nation’s highest court.
As a first-term senator from Illinois, Obama used a procedural maneuver called a filibuster. Alito was confirmed anyway.
“Some Democrats engaged in a process of throwing sand in the gears of the confirmation process and that’s an approach that the president regrets,” Earnest told reporters.
Earnest portrayed Obama’s vote to try to block Alito as “symbolic” and sought to contrast it to “Republicans’ reflexive opposition” to Obama nominating a justice to replace Scalia.
McConnell spokesman Don Stewart said the filibuster that Obama joined undercut the White House’s argument.
Earnest declined to rule out that Obama would make a recess appointment — naming someone to the job on a temporary basis while the Senate is on a recess, bypassing the confirmation process.
The White House has been in touch with the offices of “multiple” senators of both parties about the court vacancy, Earnest said.
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