Joe Biden in 1992: Presidents Shouldn’t Make SCOTUS Nominations in Election Year

Top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell said Tuesday that his party won’t permit a vote on any Supreme Court nominee submitted by President Barack Obama and will instead “revisit the matter” after the presidential election in November.

Since the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on February 13, debate has occurred over whether or not President Barack Obama should nominate someone to replace him or if the decision should be delayed until after the presidential election.

“It is the duty of the Senate, under the Constitution, to give our advice and give our consent or withhold our consent”, said Collins to CNN on Monday.

“I recognize the right of the president, be it Republican or Democrat, to place before the Senate a nominee for the Supreme Court and I fully expect and look forward to President Obama advancing a nominee for the Senate to consider”, Kirk wrote.

Led by McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, a broad majority of his Senate colleagues declared that the next election should determine whether a Republican or Democratic president should fill the vacancy.

Constitutionally speaking, President Bush and President Obama are both wrong.

Describing the Republican tactics as “hard to comprehend”, Reid said senator Chuck Grassley is set to “go down as the most obstructionist judiciary chair in the history of our country”, worse even than those in the civil rights era.

The White House on Tuesday insisted Vice President Biden’s 1992 comments about stopping Supreme Court nominations in an election year won’t sidetrack President Obama’s efforts to get a nominee confirmed.

McConnell cited past statements from Sen.

The latest revelation: A June 1992 interview Biden gave to The Washington Post, arguing against confirmation hearings of a prospective nominee by President George H.W. Bush to the nation’s highest court.

Biden claimed that his proposal was not “an attempt to save the seat on the Court in the hopes that a Democrat will be permitted to fill it”, a charge Democrats have leveled at Republicans over the past week. Among the members of the panel is Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, and the Texas senator has vowed to block any nominee.

Precedent holds that the committee could reject Obama’s nomination outright or follow the tradition of the failed nomination of Robert Bork or the bitterly-fought 1991 battle over Justice Clarence Thomas and send it to the full Senate without actually approving it.

“I would not, precisely because of Vice President Biden’s record when he served on the Judiciary Committee”, Earnest said.

“Refusing to even consider the President’s Supreme Court nominee is unprecedented”, he tweeted.

In his speech on the Senate floor, McConnell said that the confirmation process for the next Supreme Court justice should wait until after the 2016 election.

If Kirk is seen as too conservative, he risks losing his reelection bid to a Democrat.

The White House said shortly after Scalia’s death that a new judge would soon be nominated by Mr Obama.

The overwhelming likelihood is a failed nomination, and the Senate probably won’t vote on it, either in the Judiciary Committee or on the floor.

“There’s been a basic consensus, a basic understanding, that the Supreme Court is different”.