No Supreme Court appointment in election year
In your Feb. 16 editorial, “The Senate Shouldn’t Delay Replacing Scalia,” you said Republicans should stop their shenanigans and let President Obama name a nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court ASAP. On Feb. 18, Carol McIntyre said in her letter to the editor that the GOP intends, in a purely partisan effort, to subvert the Constitution. Both the editorial and McIntyre ignore what the Constitution says and the history of Democratic efforts to block Supreme Court appointments.
Our Constitution makes clear that it is the president’s job to nominate Supreme Court justices, but it is the Senate’s job to confirm or deny that nominee, and it has every right to delay for as long as it might like for any reason.
In 1960, the Democratic-controlled Senate passed a resolution against any election-year Supreme Court appointments to prevent President Dwight Eisenhower from making any recess appointments.
In 2006, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Charles Schumer and 20 other Democratic senators filibustered President George W. Bush’s appointment of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. In 2007, Schumer said, “I will do everything in my power to prevent one more ideological ally from joining (John) Roberts and Alito and recommend the Senate should not confirm any Bush nominee to the Supreme Court. Today, he calls the actions by Republicans obstructionism. Obama recently apologized for his participation because Alito wasn’t liberal enough. Now, he wants free rein to stack the court. It already has four liberals, two moderates and two conservatives. Scalia was the “originalist” respected by all the jurists for his knowledge of and respect for the Constitution, his humor and wisdom.
It has been 76 years since a Supreme Court justice was nominated and confirmed in an election year. There is no need to deviate from this long-standing precedent. Let the American people decide what kind of country they want to live in. It’s their country, isn’t it?
John Loughman
West Finley