Sign up to get Today’s Best Articles in your inbox
Join 350,000+ subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of
The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
Want to add more newsletters?
An account already exists for this email address, please log in.
Chuck Schumer claims he wasn't opposed to all Bush SCOTUS nominations in 2007
In the growing debate over whether the Senate should vote on President Obama's forthcoming Supreme Court nomination to replace Antonin Scalia, conservatives are hinging on an argument made by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) in 2007, when the tables were turned.
"We should not confirm any [George W.] Bush nominee to the Supreme Court, except in extraordinary circumstances," Schumer said at the time.
Now Schumer, who supports a swift appointment for Obama's Supreme Court pick, is clarifying his previous stance in an attempt to ward off the hypocrisy accusations being leveled against him. The senator wrote Tuesday:
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
What I said in the speech given in 2007 is simple: Democrats, after a hearing, should entertain voting no if the nominee is out of the mainstream and tries to cover that fact up. There was no hint anywhere in the speech that there shouldn't be hearings or a vote. Only that if after hearings and a vote, Democrats determined that the nominee was out of the mainstream and trying to hide it, they should have no qualms about voting no. Nor was there any hint that this idea that Democrats should oppose hard right ideologues should apply only in the fourth year of the president’s term. In fact, I said it should apply to this president, George W. Bush, or any future president whenever they nominated such a candidate. [Medium]
For what it's worth, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) also holds a slightly different view on nominations than he used to, as CBS News notes.
"It is time to move away from advise and obstruct and get back to advise and consent," the then-whip said in 2005, as Democrats tried to block a Bush appointment to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Sign up to get Today’s Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the day’s biggest news and analysis – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Julie Kliegman is a freelance writer based in New York. Her work has appeared in BuzzFeed, Vox, Mental Floss, Paste, the Tampa Bay Times and PolitiFact. Her cats can do somersaults.
