Cranking up pressure, Dems ready to bring Garland to Capitol
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, whose panel is responsible for vetting judicial appointments, waits for the start of a hearing.
WASHINGTON >> With a name, face and judicial record finally fleshed out, President Barack Obama’s pick for the Supreme Court vacancy is ready to commence courtesy calls with senators that Democrats hope will ultimately put unbearable election-year pressure on Republicans refusing to consider any Obama nominee.
Merrick Garland planned to visit two top Democrats on Thursday, a day after Obama nominated the 63-year-old appellate court judge and former prosecutor for the seat. The White House said that after a two-week Senate recess, Garland will meet with Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who’s been a chief focus of Democratic attacks for refusing to let his panel hold a hearing for anyone Obama selects, helping to doom the nomination.
Declining to see Garland was Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who has led the GOP’s near-solid blockade against a hearing or vote until the next president makes a choice. But the planned meeting with Grassley — which his aides conceded could occur — underscored a willingness by a small but growing cadre of GOP senators to say they’d see the nominee, and in some cases take the process even further.
“I meet with anybody, and that would include him,” said Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. Flake said if a Democrat is elected president this November, he’d want the Senate to consider Garland’s nomination during a post-election, lame-duck session because “between him and somebody that a President Clinton might nominate, I think the choice is clear.”
Flake’s comment showed how Obama and the leading Democratic presidential contender, Hillary Clinton, have had a good cop-bad cop effect on some Republicans, who consider Clinton likely to make a more liberal selection should she enter the White House.
GOP Sens. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Susan Collins of Maine, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, Orrin Hatch of Utah and Rob Portman of Ohio also expressed an openness to meeting with Garland. Ayotte and Portman are among a half-dozen GOP senators in competitive re-election contests who Democrats hope will be pressured into backing hearings and a vote on Garland or be punished for their refusal by voters.
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Opposition by most Republicans means Garland’s confirmation remains an uphill climb. One reason for the intense combat over Justice Antonin Scalia’s replacement is that Garland would tilt the court’s 4-4 balance in the liberal direction after decades of conservative dominance.
“The next justice could fundamentally alter the direction of the Supreme Court and have a profound impact on our country,” McConnell said Wednesday. “So of course the American people should have a say in the court’s direction” by their selection of the next president.
McConnell’s statement illustrated how the issue has blossomed into one coloring November voting that will determine White House and Senate control. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has spent weeks tying Senate GOP opposition to any Obama court nominee to similar views by Donald Trump, the Republican presidential front-runner who many GOP leaders abhor.
“Republicans now face a choice between blindly taking their marching orders from Donald Trump, or doing their jobs and providing fair consideration to this highly qualified nominee,” Reid said Wednesday.
Reid and Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, top Democrat on the Judiciary panel, planned to meet Thursday with Garland.
McConnell and Grassley aides said each senator spoke by phone Wednesday with Garland and told him the Senate won’t act on his nomination. McConnell opted for the phone conversation, “rather than put Judge Garland through more unnecessary political routines orchestrated by the White House,” McConnell spokesman Don Stewart said.
It took Obama nearly five weeks after Scalia’s death to select Garland, who stood by the president as he announced his selection in a Rose Garden appearance.
Obama said Garland has “a brilliant legal mind” but also “understands the way law affects the daily reality of people’s lives in a big, complicated democracy, and in rapidly changing times.”
Garland is chief judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, considered just a step below the Supreme Court in its clout because of its jurisdiction over administration policy.
A Harvard Law School graduate, Garland clerked for liberal Justice William Brennan Jr., an appointee of Republican President Dwight Eisenhower. As a federal prosecutor, he oversaw the investigation and prosecutions in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing case and the case against Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.
As a justice, Garland would be expected to take liberal-leaning views on environmental regulation, labor disputes and campaign finance. On criminal defense and national security cases, he’s earned a reputation for a law-and-order streak, siding often with prosecutors.
McConnell and Grassley were among four GOP senators still serving who opposed his confirmation to the court of appeals in 1997, while seven remaining Republicans voted “yes.”
“He may very well be very good nominee. I voted for him earlier,” said one of those senators, Pat Roberts, R-Kan. “But it’s not about the nominee. It’s about the process.”
Associated Press writers Matthew Daly, Kathleen Hennessey, Mary Clare Jalonick and Josh Lederman contributed to this report.
21 responses to “Cranking up pressure, Dems ready to bring Garland to Capitol”
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Sad commentary on our country. The senate should consider the appointment and vote up or down.
agreed.
Just last week Orrin Hatch said that this man would be a good candidate for the court – unlike anyone he felt Obama would appoint. But now he’s opposing the nomination? The President has done his job, as the Constitution required. It’s time for the Senate to do theirs.
They are but to you they are not because it does not agree with you.
No, they aren’t. This has never happened before. Republicans have hit yet another new low.
Just because it never happened before (it did) they are not?
kiragirl – I’m not that lying about this is helpful. There has never been an instance where a nominee has been refused a hearing by the Senate. Never. So you can make up things if you want, but facts are stubborn.
REFUSED a hearing? Is that what you meant?
I like the strategy of publicly shaming the senators who fail their duty. If they are going to avoid working, the President is going to make sure that they do it under a spotlight.
You just don’t get it. The Republicans can’t, politically speaking, confirm yet another liberal judge and destroy the balance of the court on the eve of the election. Not going to happen.
The judges appointed by Hillary Clinton will be less moderate than Chief Judge Garland. And which of Mr. Garland’s rulings, specifically, do you have an issue with? What error of Constitution or law are you alleging?
Avoid working and fail their duty? You know very well that the Senate is not obligated to do anything if they so choose. Senators can only fail in their doing their duty if it is required that they exercise their advice and consent. Withholding advice and consent is the Senate’s prerogative and thus does not constitute an avoidance of work and failure of duty.
Who is not surprised that President Obama nominated an total Anti-Gun candidate???
Any evidence that Chief Judge Garland is a “total Anti-Gun candidate?” If so, please share. Oh, that’s right, you just made it up.
You are correct, of course. Not one person on here has been able to cite anything Chief Judge Garland has written that could label him anti-gun, whatever that means. The ignorance here is really remarkable.
Rather than take the effort to cite his record, which minimal research reveals, suffice it to say that while I agree completely that the hearings should proceed, the results should consider the possible perfect storm brewing. Hillary’s promise to dismantle the NRA, combined with her ernest pledge to do her level best to ban handguns, would seems to fit quite nicely with Garland’s philosophy. And since her only chance of success would rest with the court’s backing, the importance of this nomination becomes clear. Despite what I’m sure will be voluminous amounts of testimony denying any intended fracturing of the 2nd amendment, it’s always far more important to rely on actions as opposed to words..
Hawaiikone, in this instance I think McConnell is willing to die on a hill that is not worth fighting for. While this appointment arguably shifts the balance to the left, its the next three vacancies that can change the nature of the court for a generation or more.
hawaiikone – So you mean that you don’t know what Chief Judge Garland’s actual record is, and you just made up the whole thing. Like usual. Understood.
http://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/432716/moderates-are-not-so-moderate-merrick-garland. One of many. And before your blood pressure peaks, yes, I read “http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2016/03/conservatives_smear_merrick_garland_as_an_anti_gun_warrior.html” Granted, both sides have vested interests here, but since Garland himself has been relatively silent on the issue, I prefer to judge by actions, rather than purported attitude. The fact that he pushed for a rehashing of the DC dismissal of the gun ban is the telling action for me in this case. I’m not willing to chance “modifications” to the 2nd, as that would only be another step towards the ultimate goal. Then again, I’m just one vote, as are you.
It just shows why our country is going to the dogs. These elected Congressional officials are only concerned with their party’s agenda and refuses to cross the aisle, even if the subject concerns working towards a common goal. If only they could be leaders and think and make decisions on their own beliefs instead of listening and following their party leaders. There are and have been many bills that were good for the country and because it was brought up by the opposite party, the other side opposed and thus, created chaos. This is why this country needs new blood in Congress. As an example, Congressmen Cruz, Rubio and Sanders promises to make changes to a failing government and yet, they’re the very ones that are not voicing it or trying to work across the aisle. It’s all about their own party and what they can do for themselves and not to better the country. This country is going to the dogs because of incompetent elected officials, unwilling to compromise and work together. It’s all about me and the party they belong to. Bunch of losers.
The Vice President, as a Senator once stated, the senate should not consider a lame-duck President’s nomination and the body should wait until the new President is elected. Politically for the Republicans this nomination could be a blessing, in that the Democrats could regain control of the Senate due to the negativity generated over the controversy on the Garland nomination. Plus if Clinton is elected a more radical liberal candidate could be nominated and confirmed.