MORGANTOWN — Shoes switch feet often in politics. The latest example is the U.S. Senate battle over the timing of approving a replacement for the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. President Trump has said he plans to name a nominee by Satruday.
In 2016, the Senate GOP chose not to take up President Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland, preferring to wait until a new president – they were gambling on Donald Trump – could take office. The Senate Democrats fought it tooth and nail, saying it was their duty to take up the nomination as soon as possible.
Now the GOP wants to take up the nomination ASAP while the Democrats want to wait until next year, gambling on Joe Biden winning in November.
The U.S. Constitution says nothing about the timing or election years. It says the president “shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate … Judges of the supreme Court.” Everything else is politics.
In West Virginia, Republican Shelley Moore Capito and Democrat Joe Manchin stood with their parties in 2016 and again this year.
In March 2016, Manchin said, “I look forward to evaluating Merrick Garland’s qualifications to be a justice on the Supreme Court. Senators have a constitutional obligation to advise and consent on a nominee to fill this Supreme Court vacancy and, simply put, we have a responsibility to do our jobs as elected officials. … This can only happen if the vetting process is allowed to proceed. Which I am hopeful it will.”
On Monday, Manchin said, “For the sake of the integrity of our courts and legal system, I do not believe the U.S. Senate should vote on a U.S. Supreme Court nominee before the November 3rd election. For Mitch McConnell and my Republican colleagues to rush through this process after refusing to even meet with Judge Merrick Garland in 2016 is hypocrisy in its highest form.
“The U.S. Supreme Court is the highest court in the land and it is simply irresponsible to rush the adequate and proper vetting required of any new candidate for the bench,” Manchin said. “Pursuing an overtly partisan approach to confirming a Supreme Court Justice will only deepen the political tribalism we are witnessing across this country.”
In March 2016, Capito said, “Before a Supreme Court justice is confirmed to a lifetime position on the bench, West Virginians and the American people should have the ability to weigh in at the ballot box this November. My position does not change with the naming of a nominee today.”
On Tuesday, she said, “President Trump and the Republican Senate, both elected by the American people, should act to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by Justice Ginsburg’s passing. The Constitution authorizes the president to name a nominee, and it gives the Senate the power to approve or disapprove of that nomination.
“West Virginians and the American people expect us to exercise that responsibility,” she said. “I support the choice to move forward with the confirmation process and will consider President Trump’s nominee on her merits as West Virginians would expect me to do. In these trying and polarized times, it is important to exercise our constitutional authority and move forward with the process.”
This is nothing new in the Senate, as a review of news reports shows. In 2016, Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell said that when the president and the Senate majority belonged to different parties, the voters should have a say in who will pick the nominee an election-year vacancy should be held open to let the voters settle the dispute. So he hasn’t exactly contradicted himself this time.
But Senate Judiciary chair Lindsey Graham has. In 2016 he said a Supreme Court seat shouldn’t be filled in an election year. Now he wants to fill Ginsburg’s before the election. He’s aware of his reversal and cites the Democratic demonization of Justice Brett Kavanaugh as a reason.
In a Monday letter to committee Democrats he wrote, “Lastly, after the treatment of Justice Kavanaugh I now have a different view of the judicial-confirmation process. Compare the treatment of Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh to that of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan, and it’s clear that there already is one set of rules for a Republican president and one set of rules for a Democrat president.
“I therefore think it is important that we proceed expeditiously to process any nomination made by President Trump to fill this vacancy. I am certain if the shoe were on the other foot, you would do the same,” he wrote.
Even presidential candidate Sen. Joe Biden has switched shoes. According to reports, in 1992, when he was Judiciary chair he said he would not consider any Supreme Court nomination made by President George H. W. Bush. But in 2016, as vice president, he complained when the GOP stalled Garland’s nomination.
And now, running against Trump, he’s back to 1992 form, saying Trump doing this year what Obama did in 2016 is an “abuse of power.”
Biden said, “If I win this election, President Trump’s nominee should be withdrawn. As a new president, I should be the one who nominates Justice Ginsburg’s successor.”
Tweet David Beard@dbeardtdp Email dbeard@dominionpost.com
