The White House says Republicans who want to justify ignoring President Obama’s Supreme Court nomination by citing comments Vice President Joe Biden made 25 years ago should look at Biden’s eventual actions, and not his words.
The GOP has pounced on Biden’s comments in 1992, when as a senator he argued against presidents making or senators considering Supreme Court nominees until “after the political campaign season is over.” But White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Biden ultimately ignored his own advice.
“[T]here’s often this old adage that sometimes politicians are reduced to the expression that people should ‘do as I say, not as I did,'” Earnest said. “In this instance, we actually want the Republicans in the Senate to do precisely as Vice President Biden did when he served in the Senate.”
Earnest noted that just a few years before those comments, Biden, who was then the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, allowed President Ronald Regan’s election-year nomination of Anthony Kennedy to move through his panel.
Based on Biden’s actions, therefore, the White House is hoping Republicans will “allow the president’s nominee, when he puts that individual forward, to get a fair hearing; to get a timely yes-or-no vote, and for the Supreme Court of the United States to function precisely as the founders intended,” Earnest said.
Earnest also pointed out that Biden was speaking hypothetically as there was no vacancy in June 1992, when he made his remarks. In the same speech, Biden urged President George H.W. Bush to nominate a moderate if suddenly a vacancy arose.
“‘If the president consults and cooperates with the Senate or moderates his selections absent consultation, then his nominees may enjoy my support, as did Justices Kennedy and Souter,'” Earnest quoted Biden as saying.
“[W]e can spend a lot of time sort of throwing quotes back and forth, and I think that’s sort of indicative of, you know, some comments that the president made last week, about how this process has become politicized,” Earnest continued. “But when you consider the record of Sen. Biden and his service on the Judiciary Committee, it’s a record that’s hard to beat. When you consider that he presided over the last time that the Senate voted to confirm a Supreme Court nominee in an election year … that’s what we’re asking the Senate to do.”
Earnest also pointed out that Biden held a confirmation hearing for Clarence Thomas, despite his personal opposition to elevating the conservative jurist to the high court.
“He wasn’t just in the United States Senate so that he could confirm Supreme Court justices appointed by Democrats,” Earnest said.
Republicans are using Biden’s speech as evidence that they have no obligation to act once President Obama nominates someone to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia.
