{"id":12972,"date":"2016-02-16T00:41:58","date_gmt":"2016-02-16T00:41:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=12972"},"modified":"2016-02-16T13:16:20","modified_gmt":"2016-02-16T13:16:20","slug":"election-year-vacancies-all-the-rage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=12972","title":{"rendered":"Election-year vacancies . . . all the rage"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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As long as we’re talking about filling a Supreme Court vacancy during an election year . . .<\/p>\n

Republican senators don’t want to consider a potential nominee who’ll be offered by President Obama. They want the next president to send someone for their consideration. Barack Obama is a “lame duck,” they say.<\/p>\n

The last lame-duck president to send a nominee to the Senate was Ronald Reagan<\/strong>. The Senate confirmed Anthony Kennedy to the Supreme Court in 1988.<\/p>\n

So, you might be asking: Is it a common occurrence for the president to send a Supreme Court nominee to the Senate during an election year, lame-duck status or not?<\/p>\n

I looked it up. Here’s what I found.<\/p>\n

Franklin Delano Roosevelt<\/strong> nominated Frank Murphy, who was confirmed in 1940.<\/p>\n

Dwight Eisenhower<\/strong> recommended William Brennan; the Senate confirmed him in 1956.<\/p>\n

Richard Nixon<\/strong> sent two<\/em> nominees to the Senate during an election cycle: Lewis Powell and William Rehnquist; the Senate confirmed them in 1972.<\/p>\n

Let’s go back a bit farther. William Howard Taft\u00a0<\/strong>nominated Mahlon Pitney, who was confirmed in 1912. Woodrow Wilson<\/strong> nominated Louis Brandeis and John Clarke, both of whom were confirmed in 1916.<\/p>\n

This election-year moratorium nonsense being promoted by the likes of Senate Mitch McConnell and other Republicans should be revealed for what it is: a cheap political ploy to deny a Democratic president the opportunity to fulfill his constitutional duty.<\/p>\n

Granted, all the examples I cited here — except for President Reagan’s nomination of Justice Kennedy — do not involve “lame duck” presidents.<\/p>\n

The phoniness of McConnell’s desire to block any attempt by Obama to fill a vacancy created by Justice Antonin Scalia’s tragic death is transparent and obvious, given what has transpired in the past 100 years.<\/p>\n

How about allowing President Obama to do the job to which he was elected twice<\/em> to perform?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n

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As long as we’re talking about filling a Supreme Court vacancy during an election year . . . Republican senators don’t want to consider a potential nominee who’ll be offered by President Obama. They want the next president to send someone for their consideration. Barack Obama is a “lame duck,” they say. The last lame-duck … Continue reading Election-year vacancies . . . all the rage<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,13,14],"tags":[400,412,540,3099,4017,5053],"class_list":["post-12972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-news","category-national-news","category-political-news","tag-anthony-kennedy","tag-antonin-scalia","tag-barack-obama","tag-mitch-mcconnell","tag-ronald-reagan","tag-us-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12972"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12979,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12972\/revisions\/12979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}