WASHINGTON, Sept 19, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – US Senate Republican leader Mitch
McConnell vowed Friday to hold a vote on a nominee that President Donald
Trump names to replace late Supreme Court Justice Ruther Bader Ginsburg,
despite the looming November election.
Her death sets up a mammoth battle for the seat she left behind, with
Trump potentially moving to nominate a a new justice just weeks before the
November 3 vote, and challenger Joe Biden demanding the election be held
first, and the winner to pick Ginsburg’s successor.
“President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United
States Senate,” McConnell, a chief ally of the president in Congress, said in
a statement shortly after Ginsburg’s death was announced by the court.
The move would be in direct opposition to Ginsburg’s reported dying wish
that she not be replaced “until a new president is installed” in January,
2021.
Such a step would be unprecedented in modern times — and is certain to
infuriate Democrats who have already called for McConnell to wait to bring a
nomination to the floor until at least January, when control of the White
House and Senate could change.
“The voters should pick the president, and the president should pick the
justice for the Senate to consider,” Biden told reporters after learning of
Ginsburg’s death.
“This was the position the Republican Senate took in 2016 when there were
almost 10 months to go before the election. That’s the position the United
States Senate must take today.”
Biden was referring to McConnell’s infamous refusal in February 2016 to
bring Barack Obama’s nominee to replace late justice Anthony Scalia to the
floor — fully 250 days before that year’s election — because it was too
close to the vote.
“The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next
Supreme Court Justice,” McConnell said in a statement released after Scalia’s
death.
“Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new
president.”
The powerful and shrewd Senate tactician addressed the issue in his
statement Friday, saying he refused to move on Obama’s nomination of Merrick
Garland because Republicans, already in the majority in 2106, “pledged to
check and balance the last days of a lame-duck president’s second term.”
He added that since the 1880s, “no Senate has confirmed an opposite-party
president’s Supreme Court nominee in a presidential election year.”
Some Democrats have argued that if McConnell successfully holds a vote on
Trump’s new nominee, then Democrats — if they manage to win control of the
Senate — should move to expand the Supreme Court.