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March 30, 2016 11:48 AM UTC

Cory Gardner: Ready To Play Ball on SCOTUS Yet?

  • 18 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols
Sen. Cory Gardner (left).
Sen. Cory Gardner (left).

In the weeks since the sudden death of conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Colorado’s junior U.S. Senator Cory Gardner has had varying responses to the question of whether he would consider a nominee from President Barack Obama in the final year of Obama’s presidency. After an initial statement that appeared to leave an opening for an “acceptable” nominee, Gardner slammed the door on any consideration of a nominee from Obama well before Judge Merrick Garland was nominated.

In a meeting with the Grand Junction Sentinel’s editorial board yesterday, Gardner appeared firm on this latter obstructionist stance, even as the polls say it’s a huge political mistake:

Despite national polls indicating that even a majority of Republican voters say the Senate should hold hearings on President Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland, Gardner remains steadfast in his belief that confirmation should wait until after the election.

The American people deserve a voice in this process, Gardner said. Asked to consider that the American people have already spoken — twice — by electing Obama, Garner countered that voters have also given the Senate a Republican majority to “advise and consent” on the process as it chooses.

Why not hold hearings, even if just to reject the nominee?

“If it’s a political show, I’m not interested,” Gardner said.

So, if the will of the people is expressly important and Hillary Clinton becomes the next president, the Senate should forgo a lame-duck confirmation of Garland and wait for Clinton to nominate someone else — likely younger and more liberal than the moderate Garland?

“That’s exactly right,” Gardner said…

But as Politico reports today, the terrible reception from the voting public the GOP’s stonewalling of Obama’s Supreme Court nominee has received, especially after the moderate and popular Judge Garland was nominated, could mean a very different outcome when the Senate returns from Easter recess next week.

With small cracks emerging in the Republican Supreme Court blockade — and private indications from some GOP senators that they’d likely back Merrick Garland if he ever did come up for a vote — the White House is preparing to press its perceived political advantage when senators return from their recess next week…

White House aides have expanded their universe of potential Republican “yes” votes from their original three-category breakdown of vulnerable incumbents up for reelection, moderates and older institutionalists. Their target list now includes the six Republicans who voted for Garland’s confirmation to the D.C. Circuit Court in 1997 — including Utah’s Orrin Hatch and Mississippi’s Thad Cochran — and off-cycle Republicans in states where the other senator is a Democrat who can help carry the attack back home. That smaller list includes Indiana’s Dan Coats (who’s retiring, and also voted for Garland in 1997), Nevada’s Dean Heller and Colorado’s Cory Gardner. [Pols emphasis]

Polling clearly shows that Republicans overstepped by planting the flag against any Obama nominee before the nominee was even known, and the number of GOP Senators willing to at least meet with Judge Garland has continued to grow. Sen. Gardner, for his part, is very sensitive to such changing political realities, and much less dogmatically committed than, say, his successor in Congress Rep. Ken Buck.

If the GOP’s SCOTUS stonewall does come apart when the Senate reconvenes next week, watch for Gardner to keep himself on the winning side.

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18 thoughts on “Cory Gardner: Ready To Play Ball on SCOTUS Yet?”

      7. You have got to be kidding? The only GOP candidate to win a gubernatorial or U.S. Senate race in Colorado in 14 years and you're bitching about him.

        Jeez, Moddy, you're tough to satisfy. Maybe Timmy Neville will take you to wing nut Nirvana.

        1. How many are left in the clown car after Neville gets the nod?  Six? Eight? Ten?  One of them is going to have to flank the moderate senator on the right in a '20 primary.  Moddy's firing the first shot over the bow right here on CoPols!

          1. The smart money will be on Peggy Littleton. She's Colorado's own Sharon Angle. Of course, we can never rule out another run by Ryan Frasier.

  2. Politico on the issue of 'playing chicken' (and somebody's nightmare, TBD)

    The Supreme Court: The Nightmare Scenario

    A year without a justice is the least of our worries. We could be in for a full-scale constitutional meltdown.

    At some point, someone in the White House counsel’s office will notice that the Constitution doesn’t actually say that the Senate needs to vote to confirm a judicial nominee. The Constitution says that appointments shall be made “with the advice and consent” of the Senate. Traditionally, we have thought that the Senate’s “consent” is signaled by an affirmative vote. But voting on the nominee is just a convention—a shared understanding among the players in the game that we do things a certain way.

    So imagine this script. Conscious of the apparent radicalism of deeming a Supreme Court nominee appointed without an affirmative Senate vote, President Hillary Clinton approaches the project incrementally. On January 20, 2017, she nominates a Deputy Secretary of Agriculture, and three weeks later, when the Senate has done nothing, President Clinton mentions at a press briefing that if ninety days go by from the date of nomination and the Senate still hasn’t acted, she will take that to mean that the Senate has no objection and has consented to the appointment. The Agriculture nominee will move in to the Deputy’s office, start signing letters as “Deputy Secretary,” and so on. Nobody will stand in the way, because the Department of Agriculture will be run by Democratic appointees.

    Then, the next week, the President nominates someone to be a judge on a federal judicial circuit that already has a majority of Democratic-appointed judges, as well as a Democratic appointee as chief judge. We go through the same steps, and 90 days later, the judicial appointee is sworn in with all the customary ceremony, puts on a black robe, and starts deciding cases. Republicans cry foul, but the courthouse personnel go along—remember, the relevant circuit is already controlled by Democratic appointees—and there is no process for removing the person who is now acting, and being treated like, a federal judge. (Impeachment won’t work, because the Senate won’t muster a two-thirds majority to remove someone whom it couldn’t be bothered to block by simple majority vote.) And then, with the precedents established, the president makes the fateful announcement: Ninety days more, and I’m going to start calling Merrick Garland “Justice.”

    1. MacKinnon is one possibility. Although she does make Ruth Bader Ginsburg look like Phyllis Schafley in comparison.

      Whatever happened to Lani Guinier? Is she still around? She has history with the Clintons. Another candidate who would reshape that court!  🙂

      These fools are going to regret their decision to reject Garland…….

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