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| Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, arrives for a committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2016. Senate Republicans, most vocally Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, are facing a high-stakes political showdown with President Barack Obama sparked by the recent death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Republicans controlling the Senate — which must confirm any Obama appointee before the individual is seated on the court — say that the decision is too important to be determined by a lame-duck president |
WASHINGTON
(AP) -- Majority Leader Mitch McConnell emphatically ruled out any
Senate action on whoever President Barack Obama nominates to fill the
Supreme Court vacancy, an extraordinary step that escalated the partisan
election-year struggle over replacing the late Antonin Scalia.
Democrats promised unremitting pressure on Republicans to back down or
face the consequences in November's voting.
After
winning unanimous public backing from the 11 Republicans on the Senate
Judiciary Committee, McConnell told reporters that that panel would hold
no hearings and ruled out a full Senate vote until the next president
offers a nomination. Such steps would defy many decades of precedent
that have seen even the most controversial choices questioned publicly
by the Judiciary Committee and nearly always sent to the entire chamber
for a vote, barring nominees the White House has withdrawn.
"In short, there will not be action taken," McConnell told reporters.
The
Kentucky Republican said he wouldn't even meet with an Obama selection
should the White House follow tradition and send the nominee to Capitol
Hill to visit senators. Such a snub could generate campaign-season
television images of a scorned selection standing outside a closed door.
"I don't know the purpose of such a visit," McConnell said. "I would not be inclined to take one myself."
Obama
is expected to announce a nomination in the next few weeks. Since the
Senate started routinely referring presidential nominations to
committees for action in 1955, every Supreme Court nominee not later
withdrawn has received a Judiciary Committee hearing, according to the
Senate Historical Office.
With the issue
certain to roil this year's presidential and congressional elections,
Democrats said Republicans were topping their own obstructionist
high-water mark of three years ago, when their doomed effort to force
Obama to repeal his own health care law helped produce a 16-day partial
government shutdown.
They also accused
Republicans of following the lead of billionaire Donald Trump, a leading
GOP presidential candidate who's called on Senate Republicans to derail
any Obama court selection. Democrats and some Republicans believe that
if Trump is the GOP presidential nominee, he will cost Republicans seats
in Congress.
"The party of Lincoln is now the party of Donald Trump," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told reporters.
Filling
the vacancy left by Scalia's unexpected death on Feb. 13 is crucial
because without him, the Supreme Court is left in a 4-4 ideological knot
between justices who are usually conservative and its liberal wing. The
battle has invigorated both sides' interest groups and voters who focus
on abortion, immigration and other issues before the court.
"He
hasn't seen the pressure that's going to build," Reid said when asked
if McConnell might relent. "It's going to build in all facets of the
political constituency and the country."
After
meeting privately with GOP senators for the first time since Scalia's
death, McConnell and other leaders said rank-and-file Republicans were
overwhelmingly behind the decision to quickly halt the nomination
process.
"Why even put that ball on the
field?" Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said of hearings. "All you're going to
do is
fumble it. Let the people decide."
Moderate
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., who faces an
arduous re-election race this fall, are among the few who've voiced
support for at least holding hearings on an Obama nominee.
Democrats are
hoping that other Republican senators facing November re-election in
swing states including New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin
will relent over time or face retribution from voters.
No.
3 Senate leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said McConnell wanted to quickly
end any talk of a nomination process proceeding because, "He wants to
lock his people in because he knows the whirlwind's coming."
White
House spokesman Josh Earnest said it was "absolutely" possible the
Senate would end up holding hearings, pointing to statements by Collins,
Kirk and others. Earnest said Obama has spoken in the last day to
Republican lawmakers, including some on the Judiciary panel.
McConnell
and other Republicans have said the high court vacancy should not be
filled during a presidential election year and that the voters - by
electing the next president - should choose who makes that nomination.
Democrats
note that in 1988, a Democratic-led Senate confirmed Anthony Kennedy to
the court, though he'd been nominated by President Ronald Reagan the
preceding year. Republicans say it's been over eight decades since a
nomination occurred and was filled in the same election year.
"Because
our decision is based on constitutional principle and born of a
necessity to protect the will of the American people, this committee
will not hold hearings on any Supreme Court nominee until after our next
president is sworn in on January 20, 2017," Judiciary Committee
Republicans said in their letter to McConnell.
In
remarks Tuesday at Georgetown University law school, Justice Samuel
Alito sounded unfazed about possibly spending the rest of this year in a
court whose members are locked in a 4-4 tie.
"We will deal with it," Alito answered when asked about Republicans' resolve to oppose anyone Obama nominates.
