Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine.) still hasn't reached a decision on President Obama's Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, but she really hopes her party gives her the chance to.
"The only way that the Senate can reach reasonable and informed decisions on nominees to the highest court in the land is for us to follow the regular process," Collins said Wednesday in an interview with the Maine Public Broadcasting Network. "That means having these individual one-on-one meetings and then also the Judiciary Committee, in my view, should hold the kind of in-depth hearings that it has traditionally held."
Thus far, the GOP has adamantly refused to hold hearings for Garland in favor of waiting for the next president to pick a nominee, a move Collins says she thinks is unjust. "I think it's simply not fair and not right to say that no matter who the president was going to nominate, that we should not look at this person the way that we normally would," Collins said.
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Right now, she's trying to get that point across to colleagues — though she admits she hasn't had much success so far. "I wouldn't say I've been overwhelmingly successful in convincing the chairman of the Judiciary Committee to hold hearings," Collins said, "but I hope that as time goes on, and as people sit down with Judge Garland and talk to him one-on-one, that perhaps there will be a shift in the position of the chairman of the Judiciary Committee."
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