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Sen. Elizabeth Warren has skewered Republican arguments that President Obama should wait for the next president to pick a replacement for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia so that the American people can speak. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell "is right that the American people should have a voice in the selection of the next Supreme Court justice," Warren wrote in a Facebook post Sunday. "In fact, they did—when President Obama won the 2012 election by five million votes." She continues:
Article II Section 2 of the Constitution says the President of the United States nominates justices to the Supreme Court, with the advice and consent of the Senate. I can't find a clause that says "...except when there's a year left in the term of a Democratic President."Senate Republicans took an oath just like Senate Democrats did. Abandoning the duties they swore to uphold would threaten both the Constitution and our democracy itself. It would also prove that all the Republican talk about loving the Constitution is just that—empty talk.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, expected to become Senate Democratic leader when Harry Reid retires next year, joined in blasting McConnell for his obstruction, predicting he wouldn't be able to sustain it. He told ABC's "This Week" that McConnell "doesn't even know who the president is going to propose. And he says, 'No, we're not having hearings, we're not going to go forward. [Leaving] the Supreme Court vacant for 300 days in a divided time? This kind of obstructionism isn't going to last."
It's going to last as long as McConnell has Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio running for president on the issue of a replacement and blocking a nomination. But leaving a vacancy on the Supreme Court for what could be as long as 13 or 14 months is not going to be a great talking point for all his senators seeking re-election this year, and Democrats are clearly going to make the most of it, with the extremely popular Warren leading the way.
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