Vice President Joe Biden on Monday was added to the tally of politicians (like President Obama) who have contradicted themselves on election-year nominations to fill Supreme Court vacancies. "Senate consideration of a nominee under these circumstances is not fair to the president, the nominee, or to the Senate itself," he said in the run-up to the 1992 election.
Biden finds himself in ample company. The Washington Post's Fact Checker blog counts "a bushel of flip-flops on approving judicial nominees" from both sides of the aisle. For example, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) argued in April 2008, "There is no reason for stopping the confirmation of judicial nominees in the second half of a year in which there is a presidential election." But this year, he discovered that there is a tradition, after all, and it's "not to confirm someone in the last year."
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