The Republicans won't give up on the ruse that this particular president, President Obama, twice elected overwhelmingly by a majority, has none of the same powers afforded to the other forty-four presidents who preceded him. A preposterous fallacy is flying around the Beltway that no precedent exists where a Supreme Court Justice appointment has successfully been made by a soon to be ex-President. It is absolutely baseless, and who is more base than Newt Gingrich, who appeared with the Fox and Friends Weekend crew to discuss replacing Scalia.
TUCKER CARLSON: Will the president be able to get his choice for the ninth seat on the Supreme Court through or not?
GINGRICH: Well he shouldn't be able to. I think it's pretty clear that the historic precedents are in the last year of the presidential term, that there's a bias towards the next president, with the votes of the American people picking that person. Mitch McConnell has got to do two things: refuse to hold hearings have the committee not even consider hearing it, and second, make sure the senate stays in Pro-Forma Session so that the president cannot make an interim appointment.
He means, McConnell needs to do what he does best: OBSTRUCT and OBSTRUCT SOME MORE. Gingrich thinks that McConnell and for some reason, Sen.Mike Lee of Utah (R) are the go-to Senators whom President Obama should consult for his choice for the High Court? How presumptuous of him!
Let's take a look at a pretty darn good source for all things SCOTUS, SCOTUSblog on the history behind this phenomena.
The first nomination during an election year in the twentieth century came on March 13, 1912, when President William Taft (a Republican) nominated Mahlon Pitney to succeed John Marshall Harlan, who died on October 14, 1911. The Republican-controlled Senate confirmed Pitney on March 18, 1912, by a vote of fifty to twenty-six.
On February 15, 1932, President Herbert Hoover (a Republican) nominated Benjamin Cardozo to succeed Oliver Wendell Holmes, who retired on January 12, 1932. A Republican-controlled Senate confirmed Cardozo by a unanimous voice vote on February 24, 1932.
Even St. Ronnie the Magnificent had one of his appointments confirmed in his last year in office.
On November 30, 1987, President Ronald Reagan (a Republican) nominated Justice Anthony Kennedy to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Louis Powell. A Democratic-controlled Senate confirmed Kennedy (who followed Robert Bork and Douglas Ginsburg as nominees for that slot) on February 3, 1988, by a vote of ninety-seven to zero.
Newt threw around the usual dog whistle terms regarding the judicial preferences of our president.
Gingrich said that while the president “has every right to recommend” a successor, “the Senate is not obligated to approve who he recommends.”
“Obama wants to send up a radical, to eliminate the Second Amendment right to bear arms, to eliminate religious liberty, to impose bigger government and more power in Washington,” he added.
“The Senate has no obligation to shift this court for the next 30 years radically to the left, in the last year of the Obama presidency.”
I bet the American people beg to differ and that reality is terrifying the right wingers desperately and bitterly clinging to their 19th Century values.
