Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn is defending the GOP decision to block anyone President Obama nominates to replace the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a decision Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has attacked as partisan.
“We’re embracing this precedent that Sen. Chuck Schumer advocated for back in 2007, which strikes me if it’s good enough for them when they’re in the majority, then it’s good enough for us when we are,” Cornyn told a Dallas radio station on Wednesday. “And certainly, this is a hypocritical argument on the part of Sen. Schumer and Senate Democrats that somehow President Obama ought to be treated better or differently than they were willing to treat President George W. Bush.”
That’s an allusion to Schumer’s well-publicized statement in 2007 that Democrats should stop Bush from appointing a third Supreme Court justice. Schumer’s team maintains that there’s no hypocrisy, because he was at least willing to allow a hypothetical nominee to receive a hearing and a vote, while Republicans are talking about not bringing up the nominee for a vote.
“What I said in 2007 is after a hearing, if senators felt that a nominee was out of the mainstream and wasn’t being forthwith about it they could vote no,” Schumer said during a Wednesday conference call. “And that is still my position today. There should be a hearing and a vote on who the president nominates.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pledged on Saturday to prevent Obama from picking Scalia’s replacement. “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice,” he said. “Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.”
Sen. Thom Tillis, R.-N.C., criticized one aspect of McConnell’s statement during a radio interview on Wednesday. “I think we fall into the trap if we just simply say sight unseen … we fall into the trap of being obstructionist,” he said. “And if [Obama] puts forth someone that we think is in the mold of President Obama’s vision for America, then we’ll use every device available to block that nomination, wait for the American people to voice their vote in November and then move forward with a nomination after the election and most likely with the next president.”
That prompted Schumer, who will take over as leader of the Senate Democrats next year, to predict that McConnell “will back down.” But Cornyn, the second-ranked Senate Republican, suggested that won’t happen.
“We ought to leave this appointment to the next president,” he said. “This ought to be a referendum, this election for president, on who makes that appointment because I think many people simply feel like they don’t recognize their country anymore … It’s entirely up to the Senate whether to confirm that nomination, and I think we should not, and we should defer that to the next president.”
