The White House is pointing to remarks from former GOP Sen. Trent Lott as a sign of hope that Republicans will eventually cave on their decision to block any Supreme Court candidate named by President Obama.
Lott, who was Senate majority leader from 1996 to 2001, predicted on Monday that Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, might relent and hold hearings on the nominee, if Obama’s high court pick is “mainstream” enough.
Presidential press secretary Josh Earnest pointed to Lott’s remarks as evidence that Republicans’ commitment to preventing Senate consideration of the nominee may be starting to crumble.
“Former Sen. Trent Lott continued saying that he expected the Senate Judiciary Committee would have hearings for the president’s nominee, so he senses that something is changing out there,” Earnest told reporters at his daily briefing. “We’ll have to see whether or not that materializes.”
Lott made his comments as part of wider ranging interview with David Axelrod, Obama’s former chief campaign strategist, on “The Axe Files” podcast. “If the president comes up with somebody that’s credible and a bit more mainstream or moderate, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Chuck give him a hearing,” Lott said in the interview that aired Monday morning.
Lott, now a Washington lobbyist, also said he would have handled the situation differently than Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who announced that he would block any Obama nominee just hours after the public learned of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s death.
“I probably would’ve handled it differently,” he said. “My attitude, particularly on the Supreme Court, was that elections do have consequences, sometimes bad, and I tried to lean towards being supportive of the president’s nominees, Democrat or Republican.”
“If they were qualified by education, experience and demeanor and had no other side problem, my predisposition was to be for them,” added the Mississippi Republican.
Lott, however, qualified his comments by saying that he understands McConnell’s reluctance to entertain the nomination because of a lack of “trust” and how critical the nomination is to the direction of the Supreme Court for decades.
“The problem is, in my opinion and in the opinion of a lot of Republicans, and certainly in the opinion apparently of McConnell, so many of Obama’s nominees have been so bad and so far left that the trust factor is not there,” he said. “Was it wise to jump out there the way the leader did? You know, time will tell.”
“This is a very critical appointment,” he noted. “This appointment could shift the balance of the Supreme Court from 5-4 one way to 5-4 the other way for years. And, you know, that is a problem.”
Earnest called Lott’s comments “pretty important.”
“That is exactly the approach that senators have traditionally taken to considering these kinds of nominations,” Earnest said. “It’s why the Republican refusal to even consider the nominee the president would put forward is inconsistent with recent precedent, it’s inconsistent with their constitutional authorities and something that the American people don’t support.”
Republicans have argued that Obama set the tone for the current impasse by trying to filibuster Justice Samuel Alito’s nomination in 2006. The White House has since said Obama regretted that vote, in which he joined 24 other senators in a failed effort to block Alito, one of President George W. Bush’s picks to serve on the bench.
Earnest wouldn’t give any indication on the timing of Obama’s nomination, saying only that the president spent a “significant portion” of his weekend reviewing materials prepared for him on different potential nominees and discussing his choice with other senators over the phone. He would not say which senators Obama spoke to, noting only that there “multiple individual conversations.”
