President Obama regrets joining the Senate Democrats’ failed effort to block the nomination of now-Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito from coming to a vote in 2006, a White House spokesman said on Wednesday.
“As the president alluded to yesterday, he regrets the vote he made because … Democrats should have been a position in which they were making a public case; that’s what Democrats should have done,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. “They shouldn’t have just looked for ways to throw sand in the gears of the process, and, frankly … the president believes he should have followed his own advice and made a strong public case on the merits about his opposition to the nomination that President Bush had put forward.”
Obama’s objections to Alito “were based in substance,” Earnest said. But “he regrets that Senate Democrats didn’t focus more on making a public case about those substantive objections.”
Obama also acknowledged the role he played in the Senate’s lapse into almost complete inaction when it comes to judicial nominations, Earnest added.
Obama was one of 25 Democrats who filibustered Alito’s nomination, a vote that has come back to haunt him, since Obama is now asking the Senate to confirm his pending nomination to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Many Republicans have said Obama’s vote on Alito shows the Senate has the right to block even the important nominees to join the highest court in the land.
However, Earnest said that today, the question is how Senate Republicans will move the body back to functioning.
“The wording in the Constitution is unambiguous and does not provide exceptions for election years,” Earnest said.
Earnest said that “generally” the process of Obama choosing a successor to Scalia, who died on Saturday, has begun. Earnest added that previous judges who were considered when he ultimately nominated Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, who are now justices, might be considered again.
Earnest wouldn’t confirm any specific potential candidates, such as rumors that Attorney General Loretta Lynch is under consideration.
In keeping with the praise Obama offered Scalia on Saturday, he and first lady Michelle Obama are heading to the Supreme Court “to pay their respects” to Scalia, who was the longest-serving current Supreme Court judge when he died. Scalia will be lying in repose at the Supreme Court.
