“No matter where you fall on the ideological spectrum, anyone who has watched several of the last Supreme Court confirmation hearings would reach the conclusion that the process is broken,” said Sen. Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, commenting on the confirmation of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. Collins voted to approve Jackson.
“Now it’s become an endurance contest. And I don’t think that serves the purposes that we want to serve,” added Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois.
During the hearings themselves, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) fumed that should Republicans retake control of the Senate, there would be no process at all, and no Senate floor vote, for any nominees of a Democratic president if Republicans dissaprove in advance. Only so long as Graham gets his pick does any Democratic president get one (Business Insider):
Graham, whose membership on the committee gives him influence over Supreme Court and other judicial nominees, came out early in support of Judge J. Michelle Childs, a South Carolina federal-district jurist, after President Joe Biden announced he would honor his campaign pledge to nominate a Black woman to replace Justice Stephen Breyer, a retiring liberal judge. Graham said he supported Biden’s efforts to diversify the high court and publicly praised Childs as his favored rumored contender.
Graham is asserting a preemptive veto by denial of process. If the Collins statement about a broken process was not clear enough, Graham was willing to confirm at least that.
He is not alone.
Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, then Senate majority leader, famously denied hearings for Merrick Garland, President Obama’s last pick in 2016 after Justice Antonin Scalia’s death in February. It was not appropriate in an election year, McConnell argued then as majority leader. When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in September 2020, Republicans hustled through confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett, President Donald Trump’s Federalist Society-approved pick.
In an interview with Jonathan Swan of Axios on Friday, Swan pressed McConnell on whether, if again majority leader, he would allow another Supreme Court nominee by a Democratic president to reach the Senate floor for a vote.
“Can you make a commitment to the American public here today that you would at least hold hearings on President Biden’s nominee?” Swan asked.
McConnell said, “I’m not gonna signal how we’re gonna approach it.”
Swan pressed again, calling it a “big deal” that McConnell was dodging the question after his behavior in the Garland affair.
“I choose not to answer the question,” McConnell responded.
Read between the lines. No vote for any nominee other than a Federalist Society-approved nominee. Not if McConnell has say in the matter.
Republicans mean to keep their 6-3 SCOTUS majority no matter what. Stare decisis no longer holds on a conservative Supreme Court. Roe is on the chopping block. The constitutional design of the Senate gives Republicans a structural advantage where they represent a minority of Americans and they mean to keep that as well.
They don’t want to govern. They want to rule. It is not often that I agree with Susan Collins. Mark this day.
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