It’s been less than 24 hours since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia has been announce and the establishment left and right are already fighting about who will fill his seat on the supreme court. Both sides of the isle are salivating at being the influence of the Supreme Court’s future.
Yahoo.com: McConnell agreed, saying: “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.”
But Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said Obama “can and should send the Senate a nominee right away.”
In a statement, Reid said that “With so many important issues pending before the Supreme Court, the Senate has a responsibility to fill vacancies as soon as possible.
“It would be unprecedented in recent history for the Supreme Court to go a year with a vacant seat. Failing to fill this vacancy would be a shameful abdication of one of the Senate’s most essential Constitutional responsibilities,” the Nevada Democrat said.
Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, his party’s senior-most member on the judiciary committee, also sharply disagreed.
“The Supreme Court of the United States is too important to our democracy for it to be understaffed for partisan reasons,” Leahy said in a statement. “It is only February. The president and the Senate should get to work without delay to nominate, consider and confirm the next justice to serve on the Supreme Court.”
Republicans are resolute in stopping Obama from appointing a nominee.
HuffPo: In a swift statement designed to warn Barack Obama against even nominating a replacement, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) pledged to sit on his hands for the remaining 11 months of the president’s term.
“The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice,” the statement read. “Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President.”
McConnell’s reaction makes it incredibly hard to envision Obama filling the Supreme Court vacancy created by Scalia’s death. The majority leader has large control the floor of the Senate. And on this front, he is being cheered on by the conservative faction of his party.
Mere minutes after the Scalia news broke, Conn Carroll, a spokesman for Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who sits on the Judiciary Committee — through which any Supreme Court nominee must go — placed the chances of a replacement at nil.
It’s a good thing too, because the left wasted no time in blowing up twitter to make their own suggestions, not to mention crassly gloat at the good fortune presented by the opportunity.
