Senators Graham and Johnson Confirm What We’ve Suspected All Along
At a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting today, Senator Lindsey Graham admitted that by blocking anyone nominated by President Obama to fill the late Justice Scalia’s seat on the Supreme Court, Republicans “are setting a precedent here today.” Senator Graham elaborated, “We’re headed to changing the rules, probably in a permanent fashion.”
Yesterday, Senator Ron Johnson said in an interview that that if a Republican were president, he and his colleagues would be more “accommodating” with regard to a Supreme Court vacancy in a Presidential election year. “Generally, and this is the way it works out politically, if you’re replacing, if a conservative president’s replacing a conservative justice, there’s a little more accommodation to it.”
There’s really no other way to interpret these statements than as admissions that Republican Senators are ignoring history and precedent to say that the Senate doesn’t provide advice and consent on Supreme Court nominees in a Presidential election year — and are playing politics with a vacancy on the highest court in the land. Dang.
Instead of changing the rules or twisting themselves into partisan knots, might I suggest that Republican senators take the tack of honoring history, tradition, the Constitution and the judicial branch and #DoYourJob when President Obama announces a nominee.