Grassley Among Senators to Meet With Obama About Supreme Court Vacancy

Also, the Supreme Court has not yet deadlocked 4-4 since Scalia’s death on a high-profile issue, so there has been no stalemate to test the public’s reaction.

McConnell and his Republican supporters contend there is no explicit constitutional requirement for the Senate to conduct hearings, much less provide its advice and consent. There’s a distinction, they argue, between the lifetime appointments to the lower courts and to the Supreme Court.

More than a century later President Teddy Roosevelt would refer to himself as a “lame duck”.

To win, analysts said, Johnson must garner support from a different, presidential-year electorate that is likely to be younger, racially more diverse and with a potentially greater interest in moving forward with a Supreme Court nominee.

More than two dozen judicial nominees already are under consideration by the Senate Judiciary Committee, the panel responsible for vetting all presidential nominations to federal courts.

On Monday, Reid condemned Grassley’s rejection of even meeting with Obama’s potential nominee.

PHILADELPHIA — Watching the fight unfold between President Barack Obama and Senate Republicans over who should choose the next Supreme Court justice, Michael A. Bowden got angry at what he saw at the latest affront to the first black president.

The White House also put Brian Deese, a senior adviser to Obama, in charge of a White House team that will oversee the confirmation process.

Republicans haven’t completely closed the tap on the Senate’s pipeline for judicial nominees.

“All we want them to do is fulfill their Constitutional duty and do their job, and at this stage, they decided not to do that”, Reid said. In that instance, the vacancy was created because Justice Charles Evans Hughes resigned his court seat to run against President Woodrow Wilson in 1916.

The liberal Huffington Post reported a White House strategy to “shame” Senate Republicans into compliance: “Party officials are turning to a shaming campaign, seeking to badger Senate Republicans and label them obstructionists, in hopes that a few of them – presumably those with uphill re-election battles – will stop echoing the party line”.

“If they want to come back to the Oval Office I am confident we could arrange a meeting”, Earnest said.

Any pick by Obama must confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, are expected at the White House midmorning for the sit-down with Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Sen.

Democrats say that with almost 11 months left in the president’s term, the Senate should consider an Obama nominee now.

A High Point University Poll released today found that 60 percent of N.C. residents think the president should select a replacement for Antonin Scalia, who died February 13.

“No one represented that he was about to change his position”, Mr. Earnest said. This is not a new or even partisan idea. Both McConnell and Grassley voted in favor of Kennedy’s confirmation.