Democratic senators predicted Thursday that Republicans will cave to political pressure and finally be convinced to consider President Obama’s Supreme Court pick once that person is named.
After huddling with President Obama at the White House with other Democratic senators, Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., predicted that “pressure will begin to mount for the Senate to do its job, for the Judiciary Committee to do its job, for our Republican colleagues to meet with an imminently qualified candidate and to hold a hearing so we can go back to a full, competent and functioning Supreme Court.”
Coons was joined by Sens. Pat Leahy of Vermont, Chuck Schumer of New York, Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut. The strategy session came a day after it became clear that Obama could make his Supreme Court pick as early as Wednesday of next week.
The senators pointed to recent public opinion polls showing a majority of Americans want the Senate to hold hearings, as well as a vote on the president’s choice. A Wall Street Journal poll released Tuesday found 55 percent of all registered voters disagreed with Senate Republicans’ decision to block a high court nominee and refuse to hold hearings.
But an internal GOP memo circulating among Senate Republicans is claiming there’s an upside to the high court blockade. The memo, reported by Politico, found that a majority of voters would prefer to keep Scalia’s seat empty for a year or even longer rather than allow Obama to nominate a liberal justice that would swing the court to the left.
Republican pollster Greg Strimple, who wrote the memo, found that 54 percent of those surveyed were more concerned about a liberal justice being chosen to replace Scalia, compare to the nearly 41 percent of respondents who were more worried about the seat being open for a year or more, according to the Politico report.
Senate Democrats focused on the polls favoring their message, and tried to hammer home the message that more Americans want to see the Senate confirmation process at work.
“The president is going to make a nomination, and I think when the American people see that he’s following the Constitution, they’re going to ask the senators, ‘You took an oath before God to uphold the Constitution. Where’s your hearing, where’s your vote?” Leahy said.
A reporter asked Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., about his 2007 comments he made at a convention of the American Constitution Society in which he said if any new Supreme Court vacancies opened up, Democrats should not allow Republicans the chance to fill it “except in extraordinary circumstances.”
“We should reverse the presumption of confirmation,” Schumer said at the time. “The Supreme Court is dangerously out of balance. We cannot afford to see Justice Stevens replaced by another Roberts, or Justice Ginsburg by another Alito.”
Back when Schumer made the remarks, President George W. Bush had roughly seven more months remaining in his presidential term than Obama had in his when Scalia passed away.
Schumer said his comments advocated for a different policy than Republicans are engaged in right now — that Democrats should vote against a Bush nominee if he or she were out of the “mainstream,” not that the nominee should be blocked from any consideration.
“What I said in 2007 is very simple,” Schumer said. “If the members find the nominee out of the mainstream after a hearing, they’re entitled to vote no,” he told the reporter Thursday. “That’s still true today.”
