MORGANTOWN — Hours before the U.S. Senate voted to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court Sens. Joe Manchin and Shelley Moore Capito spoke separately with members of the West Virginia press about how they planned to vote.
Democrat Manchin reiterated his stance that the vote has been rushed. “It sets a precedent that we’ve never done before.” None of the prior four vacancies that occurred between July and a November presidential election were filled before the election.
Filling the post now, he said, will further divide the country. And there’s no rush. “We’re not in a judicial crisis” Eight of the nine seats are filled.
Manchin speculated that the GOP has two reasons for confirming Barrett before the Nov. 3 election. The current makeup of the court is five who are conservative and three who are moderate to progressive. So one, the GOP wants to ensure a solid conservative majority if the election results are taken to court.
And two, the GOP wants a solid majority for the Affordable Care Act suit, Texas v. United States, that the court will hear Nov. 10. The court is expected to vote by June on whether the ACA is constitutional. Part of the question is whether the individual mandate, previously ruled unconstitutional by a lower court, is severable from other provisions of the act or if the whole act must fall. There is concern that one or more conservative justices could flip and join the left-leaning minority.
“Now we have a landmark case coming up that could throw the baby out with the bathwater,” Manchin said.
The vote on Barrett is another link in a long chain of partisan division over Supreme Court nominees – Robert Bork in 1987; Clarence Thomas in 1991. Current Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has a history of attempting to blockade GOP presidential nominees, In 2013, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., unleashed the nuclear option to end the filibuster on all of President Obama’s nominees, except the Supreme Court (Manchin opposed that move). Current Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., followed suit with Supreme Court nominees in 2017.
“I will oppose any leader, Democrat or Republican, that wants to continue change the rules that divide our country further and tears our Senate apart,” he said. “On Nov. 4, we’d better have a plan of returning to civility no matter who the winner is.”
The Dominion Post asked Manchin if, apart from the timing, he believes Barrett is qualified for the job.
“She’s very, very bright,” he said. He voted to confirm her to her 17th Circuit post. She’s not as experienced as Merrick Garland, who was never considered after Obama nominated him. She has more time under her belt teaching than either working as a lawyer or a judge.
“She is qualified. … I have concerns about her writings,” what they say about her future votes. For instance, she said Roberts erred in voting to uphold the ACA. Manchin asked her about that and she said she was speaking as a teacher. “I would have concerns about that, very much so.”
While he’s technically voting against her by not voting for her, he returned to the timing. “This process should not go forward.”
Manchin has said he opposes court-packing, a concept Democratic president and VP candidates Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have been coy about supporting. But he said Monday he favors Biden’s idea of creating a bipartisan commission to review potential nominees, gauge their possible toxicity and make the system work more like it should.
Capito
Capito said she’ s reviewed Barrett’s record and met with her. “She’s just an extraordinary individual.”
Barrett is qualified, Capito said. She had a record of independence and fairness and applies the Constitution as written instead of using it to make policy from the bench. And she’s received overwhelming – if not unanimous – encouragement to confirm Barrett.
She noted that Barrett will be the fifth female justice. “I think she’s a tremendous role model in her full life for our daughters and our granddaughters to show they can go anywhere they want to go.”
The Dominion Post asked her to address the timing issues Manchin raised.
Capito reiterated what she’s said before – that the Senate majority and the presidency are both held by the same party, and that’s different from the 2106 nomination of Garland. As she’s said before, where the president and Senate majority were of the same party, seven of eight nominations were confirmed.
This process follows up the 2016 and 2018 elections that put the GOP in the White House and kept the GOP in control of the Senate. “What we’re really voting on is Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s qualifications,” she said.
“I don’t have any kind of impression of rushing to judgment here,” Capito said. “She’s been thoroughly vetted. I don’t hear anyone disputing her credentials.”
She continued, in answer to another question, “The opposite side, this being the Democrat Party, wants you [and other Barrett opponents] to believe that they’re going to lose their health care, they’re going to lose their rights, that America as we know it will no longer exist when Judge Barrett ascends to the Supreme Court.
“To me that’s a political scare tactic,” she said, “that I really think does a disservice to the process and really concerns a lot of people.” Barrett has said she’ll consider each case individually, impartially and in the context of the Constitution.”
Tweet David Beard@dbeardtdp Email dbeard@dominionpost.com
