The White House and the Republican Party are bracing for an epic battle over President Barack Obama’s plan to nominate a successor to Supreme Court judge Antonin Scalia who died on Saturday amid the Republican
insistence that the president should leave the job to his own successor.
After Obama announced on Saturday that he would make the nomination in “due time”, the White House has indicated that the selection could come about within weeks even as legal and media circles widely expect the president to tap Indian-American jurist Sri Srinivasan for the key nomination.
“As the president said last night, he takes his constitutional responsibility seriously and will approach this nomination with the time and rigour required,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz said on Sunday, adding: “At that point, we expect the Senate to consider that nominee consistent with their responsibilities laid out in the United States Constitution.” The Senate Republicans, however, remain firm that the president should not proceed with this nomination of far-reaching significance in his final year in office. After Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell’s statement that “this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president”, Texas Senator and presidential hopeful Ted Cruz has threatened to filibuster any Obama nominee to the apex court.
“We’re advising that a lame-duck president in an election year is not going to be able to tip the balance of the Supreme Court,” Cruz told NBC, while his Senate colleague and fellow-presidential aspirant Marco Rubio told CNN, “The next president should have a chance to fill that void, and not someone who’s never going to answer to the electorate again.”