Susan Ferrechio reports for the Washington Examiner on the partisan purposes to which Democrats are turning in the wake of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s death.
Do your job. It’s a popular motto used by the New England Patriots, and now Senate Democrats have taken up the slogan to pressure Republicans into considering President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court.
If the GOP refuses, Democrats hope to extract a political price by damaging the re-election prospects of GOP senators running for re-election.
Democrats hoisted “Do Your Job” signs at a recent press conference and said it during Senate floor speeches directed at GOP leaders, who announced last month they will not hold hearings or votes on the person Obama taps to replace the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. …
… Democrats are in the minority and have no control over the Senate’s official committees. But last month they staged their own hearing on the vacancy, which leaves the court essentially tied with four conservative-leaning justices and four liberal-leaning ones.
The Democrats’ witness list included constitutional scholars partial to the idea that the GOP should take up a nominee this year. One witness, Georgetown University professor Peter Edelman, said he believed Republicans were violating the Constitution by refusing to take up a nominee. He joked that the only way to get past the GOP’s refusal to take up the nomination may be sending them to “Guantanamo,” the U.S. detention center for terrorists located in Cuba.
Democrats plan to keep up the pressure on the GOP in the months ahead.
