Republicans suggesting they will refuse to consider any Supreme Court nominee put forward by a Democrat are only jeopardizing their own credibility, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Thursday.
“It certainly questions the credibility of those who said the next president should get to choose” the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s successor, Earnest said.
Republican Senate candidates running on a theme that they could check Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton if she becomes president “are just promising more of the same Republican congressional dysfunction that has infected Washington for the last six years, and I think this is the clearest evidence of it,” Earnest said. He was responding to statements from GOP Sens. Ted Cruz, Texas, Mike Lee, Utah and John McCain, Ariz., that they won’t consider federal Judge Merrick Garland in the lame-duck session, or anyone else that Hillary Clinton might put forward.
“Vowing to oppose any nominee” for partisan reasons “runs contrary to the long-standing tradition of the United States Senate,” Earnest said.
“It undermines confidence in our judicial system … it would do a lot of damage to a well thought out, carefully considered architecture that was put in place by our founding fathers; so it would be a real shame,” he said.
