Senate Republicans are nearly unanimously in support of a vote on a new Supreme Court justice this year, and most want it to happen before the election.
Republican senators huddled at a closed-door lunch at their political headquarters near the Capitol. Those in the room said lawmakers largely want a vote to take place ahead of an election that could cost the GOP the Senate and the White House.
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“I think we need to move here, with all deliberate speed,” Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, said.
Republicans on Tuesday locked in the votes needed to take up a nomination, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has not decided when this year it should occur.
Hawley and other Republicans believe the GOP unity on confirming a nominee could disintegrate if Republicans lose on Nov. 3.
“You’ll have folks within our caucus who would become less comfortable, depending on what the outcome is,” Hawley said.
President Trump said he would name the nominee on Saturday, the day after Washington services conclude for the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died on Friday.
McConnell told reporters in the Capitol on Tuesday that once Trump makes his pick, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham will set the schedule for holding hearings and a vote to advance the nominee to the Senate floor.
Once that happens, McConnell said, “I’ll decide when and how to proceed.”
While McConnell won’t say whether it will happen before or after the election, leaders note there are five weeks until voters head to the polls, which compares with the amount of time needed to confirm prior Justices.
“I think if we get a nominee on Saturday, that gives us at least five weeks, which would be sufficient time, if you’re following in normal protocols the way everything happens around here,” Majority Whip John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, told reporters. “And there’s certainly precedent, and some fairly recent precedent, for processing nominees in an expeditious way.”
The desire for an expeditious confirmation is among the reasons many Republicans favor Trump picking a nominee who has already been scrutinized by the Judiciary Committee and confirmed by the Senate.
Trump’s leading candidate for the nomination is believed to be U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Amy Coney Barrett, 48, who was confirmed by the Senate in 2017 with the backing of Republicans and three Democrats.
Thune told reporters the timing will largely depend on how quickly the nominee can move through the committee process and who it is.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty until we have a nominee,” Thune said. “When we have a nominee, that starts to clarify it.”
