Posted on 02/17/2016 6:00:27 AM PST by doldrumsforgop
President Obama fired back Tuesday at Senate Republicans pre-emptively threatening to block his eventual nominee to succeed the late Justice Antonin Scalia, saying at a press conference that the Senate has “more than enough time†to consider his pick and he intends to press ahead.
“The Constitution is pretty clear about what is supposed to happen now,†Obama said. “When there is a vacancy on the Supreme Court, the president of the United States is to nominate someone. The Senate is to consider that nomination.â€
Obama, in his most extensive remarks on the vacancy since the 79-year-old Scalia was found dead at a Texas ranch on Saturday, rejected widespread calls by Republican lawmakers and 2016 candidates to defer to the next president to fill Scalia’s seat.
“There is no unwritten law that says that it can only be done on off-years. That’s not in the constitutional text,†Obama said, blasting what he called an “obstructionist†Senate.
The president has found himself in an awkward position, though, as he scolds Republicans over threats to block his nominee – since Obama, as a U.S. senator, tried in 2006 to filibuster the nomination of Samuel Alito, who ultimately was confirmed. Asked about that seeming discrepancy on Tuesday, Obama did not answer directly. He noted that senators are sometimes worried about primary elections and a backlash from supporters, and take “strategic decisions.†But he brushed off his own opposition to Alito, saying he’s on the bench now, “regardless of which votes particular senators have taken.â€
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Charles Grassley had started caving before Obama had even left the podium.
We’re SCROOOOOOOD.
With McConnell in there, it makes it easy to believe.
This is another (they do it all the time) attempt to divide and conquer.
Some of the senators are up for re-election....if they cave in, they will be unemployed very soon
Did anyone listen to his rambling rant at the presser?
The first lady called on asked the relevant, but obviously anticipated question about O’s plans for the Supreme Court. He must have went on for 20 minutes, about that, the GOP, his duty... He loves the sound of his own voice, and hopes everyone else does, too.
He’s a master at doublespeak, as well. The same guy who filibustered Alito, from the Schumer party that wanted to block all GWB nominations a year and a half before the end of his term, is now piously spouting about the Constitution.
If he really wanted to fulfill his constitutional duty, he would resign immediately from the office he was never constitutionally qualified to hold
Totally agree, the GOP needs to go on the offensive and frame this with reality, the reality that the Dems would have the exact same position, and have, and will instead allow Freedom loving Americans to choose at the ballot box: Freedom vs. Hillary
He’s going to make a recess appointment, watch.
Trump for President.
Ok 0, and when you put up a candidate who is out of touch with the main stream on 1st and 2nd Amendment issues, the Senate will do their Constitutional duty and reject your radical appointment as unfit
McConnell is an idiot for (among many other things...) saying he’d obstruct/
He should have said, “We’ll give the President’s nominee a fair hearing, yadayda
Folks...when POTUS Barack Hussein Obama says that Donald J. Trump will never be the POTUS...it really means....”My Satan. if this dude Trump ever becomes POTUS...my legacy will be be in the cesspool for all eternity”!!! IMHO, Obama just simply joins the multitude, of low life Democrat & Republican Establishment types that told us Donald J. Trump will go nowhere...politically!!! WRONG!!! GO DONALD J. TRUMP!!! The list of these buffoons is too long to list here. And. anyone that votes for Cruz, Bush, Rubio, Kasich is simply throwing their vote away!!! Just more of the same low life Establishment!!!
I will never figure out why GW Bush agreed to appear with that deadbeat brother of his, Jeb Bush!!! The very fact that GW now announces he will not make anymore public appearances with his brother tells the entire story!!! Ya know that the Bush & Bush rally yesterday had for folks in attendance, somewhere between 880-3,000 people. DJT had 20,000 between his two rallies yesterday. I guess GW Bush was not as popular in South Carolina as the mainstream media has been telling us!!!
Constitutional duty = 0bama oxyMORON
Let the low information voter think what they want. That's an oxymoron anyway. Low information voters aren't even paying attention and won't vote democRAT based on this argument by Obama.
The Constitution says, "Senate must consider..." and that's all. The Senate doesn't have any responsibility to a president's SC nominee beyond that consideration to do anything. They don't have to say yea or nay or give him what he wants.
Just negate every word that comes out of its mouth. So satanic.
Remember all the anti-Christ shouts? This one is our training dummie.
His duty is to nominate after that it is out of his hands
but Mitch and the wussy boys will roll over and give the DiC everything he wants and more
You’re a lame duck president Barry. Your power is gone!
Isn't Grassley the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman? This wimp started to fold before McConnell.
“How come Trump could name two judges right away and Obama hasn’t named one yet?”
I think Obama would like to carefully pick one that the public would view as a reasonable compromise between liberal and conservative and thus it would look bad for republicans to oppose it.
Yeah, but you’ve got Cruz, Lee, and a few other conservatives there.
I think it will hold. You at least have the argument that the current SCOTUS doesn’t complete this term until June. After that, it’s convention season, and no one is paying attention.
Imagine what all obama would do if he gets his liberal nominee in the SC. He’d finish the job of changing America with the months he had left. It’d be the biggest present he ever imagined. There may be more judges to appoint if we do get a Republican President in 2017, but for the time left, he’d transform this country into something so very bad that just thinking down that line sends chills. Everything he ever wanted to do and has not done yet... the really significant things... the things that would hurt us to the core and change the way we live... It’d be a disaster. The left is so uninformed and senseless they don’t know what their wishes would do to everything. There is a sure outcome to stupidity.. and they don’t have enough sense to realize it.
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