The nation’s leading editorial boards are mostly in agreement that the Republican-controlled Senate must give a fair hearing to whomever President Obama nominates to succeed Justice Antonin Scalia, the 79-year-old Supreme Court judge whose death over the weekend threw the nation’s capital into a state of disarray.
From the Washington Post to the New York Times and others, the boards of the nation’s most-circulated newspapers are arguing that the GOP will do voters a major disservice if they refuse to even consider Obama’s pick to succeed the longest-serving justice on the current Supreme Court.
But the Times took that position even though years ago, it supported Senate delays when it came to confirming Republican nominations.
Scalia passed away suddenly Saturday evening of a heart attack. His death was greeted immediately by lawmakers and politicos with one simple question: “What next?” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said soon after that Senate wouldn’t consider confirming anyone until after the 2016 presidential election.
“The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president,” McConnell said this weekend.
For the New York Times and USA Today’s editorial boards, this sort of behavior is unconscionable.
“The question now is whether this Senate will weigh any of [Obama’s possible] candidates on the merits, or whether as its leaders suggest, it will use every trick in the book to deny Mr. Obama his choice,” the Times wrote over the weekend. “The latest Republican talking point is that for 80 years it has been ‘standard practice’ not to confirm any Supreme Court nominee in an election year. Besides being untrue — Justice Anthony Kennedy was confirmed by a Democratic Senate in 1988 — the claim actually insults Justice Scalia, whose originalist, textbased approach to the Constitution would surely have found room for one of a president’s explicit constitutional obligations.”
“It would not matter if President Obama nominated the ghost of Ronald Reagan himself … there will be no confirmation hearings until Mr. Obama has packed his bags and moved out of the White House,” the Times’ editorial board lamented.
Missing from the Times’ rosy recollection of the history of Supreme Court nominees is any mention of the messy and bitter battle surrounding the nomination of Judge Robert Bork.
In 1987, as Democrats launched a successful attack to block Bork’s confirmation, the Times wrote approvingly of their efforts, saying, “The president’s supporters insist vehemently that, having won the 1984 election, he has every right to try to change the court’s direction. Yes, but the democrats won the 1986 election, regaining control of the Senate, and they have every right to resist.”
Fast forward to 2016, and the newspaper’s tone is slightly different: “Senators are free to vote yes or no on any nominee. But not to vote at all is an enormous insult and grave disservice to millions of Americans awaiting justice.”
USA Today followed Tuesday by saying, “Republicans paid the price for shutting down the government, and they will face a similar price for shutting down the Constitution and the Supreme Court.”
That national paper added in an editorial, “elections have consequences, and Obama was re-elected in 2012 for four years, not three. Slow-walking a confirmation until 2017 is crass politics that puts partisan self-interest before the effective functioning of one of the nation’s most important institutions.”
“The decision about approving the next justice shouldn’t turn on which side wins in November while the high court limps along for more than a year without a tie-breaking justice. The Senate should hold timely confirmation hearings on Obama’s nominee and vote to confirm that person if he or she is highly qualified and falls within the broad judicial mainstream,” the paper added.
Over in the nation’s capital, the Washington Post mostly agreed with the Times and USA Today, but it offered a more measured basement and cautioned that both Republicans and President Obama should act responsibly.
“Mr. Obama should nominate the best qualified person he can find, not one chosen for maximum political advantage. Then senators should insist that they be given the opportunity to do what their states elected them to do: evaluate the nominee fairly, and vote aye or nay,” the Post wrote.
In contrast, the Wall Street Journal took an entirely different tone from other leading newsrooms, and its editorial board argued this week that Sen. McConnell and others are correct to reject Obama’s efforts outright.
“[P]rogressives have made the Court so political that it’s understandable that Republicans want to let the next president fill Justice Scalia’s vacancy. A GOP senator who voted to confirm an Obama nominee would demoralize his own supporters,” they wrote. “Meanwhile, the outrage among Democrats over being denied a vote is entirely synthetic as they use the issue to mobilize their own partisans.”
“Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley are right to say that the Senate should refuse to consider any nominee this year. An election-year hearing and vote would only politicize the Court more and be unfair to the nominee. So ignore any complaints you read about ‘unprecedented’ GOP ‘obstruction,'” they added.
