Biden: Obama’s Supreme Court nominee will have Republican appeal

Earnest declined to discuss a timetable for Obama’s decision, and said the president’s staff had not yet provided a “short list” of candidates.

Conservative media and other figures have taken President Obama to task for his plan not to attend the Saturday funeral, and said he would have done so for a liberal-leaning justice.

Mr. Earnest noted that both Mr. McConnell and Mr. Grassley voted to confirm Justice Anthony Kennedy in the presidential election year of 1988. John Cornyn did not rule out Judiciary Committee hearings while also saying he agreed with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., that the selection of a replacement for the late Justice Antonin Scalia should rest with the next president.

President Obama is expected to spend a “significant portion” of the weekend pouring through materials related to potential Supreme Court nominees, White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters Friday.

Earnest said Obama does not yet have a shortlist of candidates.

“I think we need somebody there now to do the job”, she said, “and let’s get on with it”.

Vice President Joe Biden will attend Scalia’s funeral Mass Saturday, which is to be held at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception near the campus of Catholic University. On Friday, the pair published an op-ed in The Washington Post arguing that “the American people” should be able to weigh in on the next SCOTUS justice instead of a “lame duck President”.

The eight remaining justices and members of the Scalia family gathered in the court’s Great Hall, where Scalia will lie in repose for the day. “This is a good idea; we should wait until there’s a new president to consider a new Supreme Court nominee because the stakes are just too high'”.

Republicans have demanded President Barack Obama – a Democrat – leave this to his successor next year.

The pace of judicial confirmations always slows in presidential election years, thanks to reluctance by the party out of power in the White House to give lifetime tenure to their opponents’ picks. Wouldn’t senators want to examine that nominee more closely – especially if the hearings occurred later this spring and Donald Trump still appeared a strong favorite to win the Republican nomination?

The fact that a conservative group is mobilizing to keep Republicans in line – with what appears to be the largest ad buy in the fight so far – suggests they are anxious Democrats could be proven right, or at least that they could scare the GOP off its course.