Sen. Roy Blunt calls GOP position on replacing Ruth Bader Ginsburg ‘tradition.’ It’s not
Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell waited less than 90 minutes after the news of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death to announce that he would push to fill her seat on the Supreme Court. Not just during an election year, but during an election.
Before you could say, “Baruch dayan ha’emet” — Blessed is the one true judge — everything Republicans said in 2016 was no longer relevant.
After Justice Antonin Scalia’s death in February of 2016, McConnell argued that it would be wrong to even give President Barack Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland a hearing just 10 months before a presidential election: “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court justice,” he said then. “Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.”
A month later, he accused Obama of wrongdoing in even nominating a replacement in the same calendar year as the next election: “It seems clear President Obama made this nomination not with the intent of seeing the nominee confirmed, but in order to politicize it for purposes of the election.” What kind of a president does that?
All of them. But in keeping with the important “that was then, this is now” doctrine, this current Supreme Court opening during a presidential election in which votes have already been cast is utterly different. Because President Donald Trump could be elected again. Because the GOP picked up two Senate seats in 2018, though it also lost the House. And mostly, because McConnell says so.
Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt and Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran have already said they agree. Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts, who is in his last year in public service, and Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley have not yet said whether they believe there should be a vote this year.
We can’t pretend to be expecting any surprises out of them, though fairness and consistency would require that they wait until after the presidential election to vote.
Asked on CBS’ “Face the Nation” why Ginsburg’s dying wish is being ignored, Blunt said, “Well, first of all, I wish we did have more time to celebrate Ruth Bader Ginsburg.” Who is denying him that time?
“You know, from the point of view of that dying wish to her granddaughter, of course, that is totally reasonable to understand that she’d rather be replaced by a president that might be of the same party that nominated her to start with. But the Constitution is the Constitution. And, you know, it takes two things to replace a Supreme Court judge: One is the president has to nominate, and two is the Senate has to determine that they want to deal with that issue at that time.”
The Constitution was also the Constitution four years ago, and there was no precedent for McConnell’s 2016 decision that he simply didn’t “want to deal with that issue at that time.”
In the interview on CBS, Margaret Brennan pressed Blunt: “But back in 2016, you refused to even meet with President Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland. And you said at the time, Americans will be voting in just a few months and that election should help determine the next member of the Supreme Court. Why has your position changed? Is it simply because Republicans are in power?”
Short answer: Yes.
“In the tradition of the country,” he said, “when the Senate and the president were in political agreement, no matter what was the election situation, the judges went on the court and other courts. When they weren’t in agreement, they didn’t.”
This isn’t true: One was not confirmed in an election year even though the president’s party held the Senate, too, and three Supreme Court nominees have been confirmed in an election year when the Senate was controlled by the other party.
Most recently, that happened in 1956, when Republican President Dwight Eisenhower nominated William Brennan. This was a recess nomination, so Brennan could get to work right away, and he was formally nominated in January and confirmed by the Democratic-controlled Senate in March.
In a fifth case contrary to Blunt’s statement, Democrats also controlled the Senate in February of the presidential election year of 1988, when they unanimously confirmed President Ronald Reagan’s nomination of Anthony M. Kennedy, who had been nominated in November of the previous year.
Our senators should at least admit that the real reason they’re arguing that this opening has nothing in common with the one created by Scalia’s death four years ago is not that it’s the right or consistent or constitutional thing to do, but because they think they can get away with it.
The Pat Roberts of 2020 should really listen to the Pat Roberts of 2016: “The next justice will have an effect on the courts for decades to come and should not be rushed through by a lame-duck president during an election year. This is not about the nominee, it is about giving the American people and the next president a role in selecting the next Supreme Court justice.”