|
 White House spokesman Eric Schultz told reporters administration
officials had started talking with Senate offices about the process,
which is shaping up to be an epic fight between Republicans and
Democrats in a presidential election year.
Republicans, who control the Senate, say Obama should put off naming
a replacement for conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, who died over
the weekend, and leave it to the next president to decide. Democrats
say it is the president's responsibility and right to make the
choice.
Americans will choose a new president in the Nov. 8 elections. Obama
leaves office in January 2017.
Scalia's death leaves the court evenly divided between liberal and
conservative justices just as it is set to decide major cases on
abortion, voting rights and immigration.
 A growing number of Republican senators have already said they will
not support an Obama nominee, including a dozen who are up for
reelection in November. On Monday, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and
Rob Portman of Ohio each announced their opposition. Both are up for
reelection this year.
“This is not the first time that Republicans have come out with a
lot of bluster, only to have reality ultimately sink in,” Schultz
said, citing recent spats over raising the U.S. debt limit and
approving a nuclear deal with Iran.
“At each pass, they took a hard line. They tried to play politics.
But ultimately, they were not able to back up their threats,"
Schultz said.
Republicans shrugged off the criticism, pointing to past political
battles over Supreme Court nominees. In 2006, Democratic leaders in
the Senate, as well as then-Senator Obama, tried but failed to block
President George W. Bush's nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme
Court, noted Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Republican Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell.
"Memories tend to be short around here sometimes," he said.
OBAMA STRATEGY
Obama, in California for a long-planned summit with Southeast Asian
leaders, will return to Washington on Tuesday after a press
conference at which he is sure to face questions about his strategy
for filling the Supreme Court vacancy.
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David Axelrod, a former adviser to the president, said the White
House should not make an "overtly political" pick while Republicans
were behaving in a such a political manner themselves.
“To me, it makes sense to nominate one of the stellar judges he's
already chosen who has been approved by this same Senate that now
refuses to act," Axelrod said.
One possible contender is Sri Srinivasan, who Republican senators
supported in 2013 when he was confirmed to the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Schultz declined to speculate on names or strategy.
Obama will look for a nominee with "impeccable credentials" who
believes in adherence to precedent and bringing one's own ethics and
moral bearings to decisions on the court in which the law is not
clear, he said.
"The president seeks judges who understand that justice is not about
some abstract legal theory, or a footnote in a casebook, but it is
also about how our laws affect the daily realities of peoples’
lives," Schultz said.
Leaving the vacancy unfilled could affect the court both this year
and next, Schultz said, calling on the Senate to act.
"The Constitution does not include exemptions for election years or
for the president’s last term in office. There’s no exemptions for
when a vacancy could tip the balance of the court,” he said.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Roberta Rampton; Editing by Alan
Crosby, Leslie Adler and Dan Grebler)
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