U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham has posited an interesting notion about who should be nominated to fill the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court.
He says his Republican Senate colleague, Ted Cruz of Texas, should get the call.
Cruz would be hailed by everyone in the Senate as the perfect choice by the new president, according to Graham — but not for reasons that have anything to do with Cruz’s credentials.
Most of Cruz’s Senate colleagues detest him. They would vote virtually unanimously to send him to the Supreme Court, said Graham, who once joked that “if you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you.”
Graham and Cruz, you must recall, once were GOP rivals for the party’s presidential nomination in 2016. Donald J. Trump ended up winning the presidency and now can nominate someone to fill the court vacancy created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.
Do I think Cruz would be a good choice? No. I don’t want the court to mess with a woman’s right to choose to end a pregnancy or to undo its ruling that legalized gay marriage.
Still, Sen. Cruz — or “Lyin’ Ted,” as Trump once labeled him — would be a most provocative selection for the court. He is a sharp lawyer, a former Texas solicitor general who has argued before the Supreme Court.
The new president might want to look to make a key appointment that would steer him away from difficult a Senate confirmation fight. In that context, Ted Cruz for the U.S. Supreme Court sounds like the right choice.