Sen. Chuck Grassley, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, indicated that he’s open to hearings on President Obama’s nominee to replace the late Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court.
“I would wait until the nominee is made before I would make any decisions,” Grassley told a group of Iowa reporters Tuesday morning, according to a Radio Iowa report. “In other words, take it a step at a time.”
Scalia’s passing has set up an epic election-year battle over filling the vacancy. President Obama has said he would nominate a replacement in “due time” and is urging the Senate to conduct a fair hearing and hold a “timely vote.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee is charged with holding hearings for all Supreme Court nominees, so Grassley will play a prominent role in considering the next candidate to fill the high court vacancy.
But within hours of news breaking about Scalia’s death, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., signaled he would block consideration of anyone the president would nominate. With the direction of the Supreme Court hanging in the balance, McConnell said, the American people should have a voice in who is selected and said the nomination should wait until the next president is elected and takes office.
Grassley’s first reaction after learning of Scalia’s death was to decline to speak about the fierce partisan politics involved in filling the vacancy. But then, after McConnell made his statement that he wouldn’t allow consideration of an Obama nominee, Grassley quickly fell in line.
“This is a very serious position to fill and it shouldn’t be filled and debated during the campaign and filled by either Hillary Clinton, Sen. Sanders or whoever’s nominated by the Republicans,” Grassley told the reporters.
Both Republicans and Democrats have held strong opinions on whether a lame duck president should be allowed to fill a Supreme Court vacancy and usually they’re opinion on the matter depended on which party occupied the White House at the time.
In 2008, toward the end of George W. Bush’s presidency, Grassley pushed back at Democratic arguments that the next president should be the one to name a high court replacement.
“The reality is that the Senate has never stopped confirming judicial nominees during the last few months of a president’s term,” he said in 2008.
Grassley, however, now is citing the opposite argument and points to statements made by Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., a member of the Democratic leadership, eight years ago.
“Senator Schumer talked about balance and we had balance: four conservatives, four liberals an one moderate and maintaining the balance for the Supreme Court is just important now as it was in 2007,” he said.
Back in 2007 when Schumer made the statements, filling a Supreme Court vacancy was only a hypothetical because there were no openings that year or the next.
The last time the Senate considered a Supreme Court nomination during a presidential election year was in late 1987 and early 1988 when President Reagan chose Anthony Kennedy.
Kennedy was confirmed in February of 1988, 10 months before George H. W. Bush was elected.
