Victory! Republicans Stop Obama and Save the Supreme Court

A formal letter signed by eleven Republicans on the twenty member Senate Judiciary Committee have officially stated they will “not hold hearings on any Supreme Court nominee until after our next president is sworn in on January 20, 2017.”  Senator John Cornyn, R-Texas, a member of the committee said,  ”It’s not about the personality. It’s about the principle.”

One of the most important and lasting legacies of any President is his Supreme Court appointments. President Obama has already made two who are reliably liberal, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Now with the death of Justice Antonin Scalia there’s a showdown about the propriety of Obama making another appointment in the last months of his final term.

Of course, liberals would love to take the conservative Scalia seat and lock in a liberal majority. The problem with that is that Democrats have steadfastly opposed Republican President’s nominees in their final months in office.

Vice President Joe Biden, who sat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, argued in 1992 when G.H.W. Bush was President that once the “political season” had started, the president should back down and wait until after the election.

In 2007 Chuck Schumer, Democratic Senator from New York, said no George W. Bush nominee to the Supreme Court should be approved, except in extraordinary circumstances, 19 months before a new president was set to be inaugurated.

Republican Senator Jeff Flake (AZ) declared, “One would have to go back more than a century to find a scenario where a president’s nominee for the Supreme Court was confirmed by the opposition party in the Senate when the vacancy occurred during an election year. I’m not about to break new ground in the Senate, particularly when any nominee could so drastically shift the balance of the court.”

Contact Senator Grassley, Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and thank him and the committee for their principled stand!

Click Here to Email the Senator or you can call (202) 224-3744