Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday that he saw no cracks among Senate Republicans on their no hearings, no votes stance against Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, despite increasing pressure.
Conservative radio host and Washington Examiner columnist Hugh Hewitt asked McConnell whether he detected any “cracks” in the GOP stance since Day 1 that they would not hold any hearings or votes on any Obama replacement for deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
“I don’t see any,” McConnell told Hewitt. “We had a couple of our members in blue states that have a contrary view, but there’s, you know, 52 others who are very comfortable with no hearings or no votes.”
“The reason for that is pretty clear. You’d have to go back 80 years to find the last time a vacancy on the Supreme Court occurred in the middle of a presidential year and was confirmed by the Senate,” McConnell said. “You’d have to go all the way back to 1888 with Grover Cleveland, a Democrat in the White House, to find the last time a Senate of the opposite party confirmed a nominee to a vacancy on the Supreme Court occurring in a presidential year.
“If that were not enough … Joe Biden when he was chairman of the Judiciary Committee in 1992, a presidential election year, said if a vacancy occurred, they wouldn’t fill it. Harry Reid said ten years ago that the Constitution didn’t require the Senate to even have a vote. And Chuck Schumer, the next Democrat leader, apparently, helpfully said in terms of this particular issue, 18 months before the end of Bush 43’s second term that had a vacancy occurred, they wouldn’t fill it,” McConnell said. “So look, we know if the shoe was on the other foot, this was a Republican president nominating someone to the Supreme Court for a vacancy occurring in a presidential year, a Democratic Senate wouldn’t act on it. And we’re not going to, either.”
When asked if he was certain they would hold their ground on the issue, McConnell said, “Yeah, there will be no hearings and no votes.”
Multiple blue-state Republicans and senators up for reelection in November have said publicly that they plan to meet with Garland, who was nominated in March — including Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H.; Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill.; and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Grassley has agreed to meet Garland over breakfast even though he has thus far held firm in blocking hearings on the nomination.
