President Obama Fulfilled His Constitutional Responsibility :Now The Senate Must Fulfill It’s Responsibility As Well…

The Constitution of the United States places into the hand of the President of the United States the responsibility to pick Supreme Court nominees . It also places the same responsibility in the Senate to advise and consent on the President’s pick. This means senators on the Judiciary committee meet with nominees have a chance to personally interview them and form an opinion on individual appointees.
The Judiciary committee is required to hold public hearings on nominees then vote in committee on said nominees . If the Nominee survives the Judiciary committee vote the full Senate then vote on that nominee.

A President of the United States is elect­ed to a four year term . His/​her duties are for the full four years, after which there is a han­dover of pow­er when a new President is inau­gu­rat­ed. The President of the United States has a respon­si­bil­i­ty to do the job and to exe­cute the man­date on which he campaigned.,
The sen­ate has a respon­si­bil­i­ty to do it’s job as well.
Much of the nar­ra­tive around Republican polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy is it’s lip ser­vice to the Constitution.
Republican com­mit­ment to the Constitution is con­di­tion­al. Their com­mit­ment is con­tin­gent on what serves their nar­row polit­i­cal inter­ests. They lie inces­sant­ly and unashamed­ly. Republicans oper­ate as a mono­lith­ic enti­ty in their oppo­si­tion and obstruc­tion of President Obama agen­da. They also speak with the same mono­lith­ic lying tongue when it suits their interest.

It was no sur­prise that when the high­ly par­ti­san Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia died that Republicans would imme­di­ate­ly indi­cate that Senators would­n’t even meet with any replace­ment of the President, regard­less of the nom­i­nee’s qualification.
Republican par­ty offi­cials across the board imme­di­ate­ly con­coct­ed a nar­ra­tive which sug­gest­ed that the deci­sion of who replaces the big­ot­ed Scalia should be left up to voters.
The Constitution has absolute­ly no require­ment for the peo­ple to appoint Supreme Court Justices through the process of elec­tions or otherwise.
That func­tion is reserved sole­ly for the President and the Senate to advise and consent.

Ted Cruz one of the Republican Candidates run­ning for pres­i­dent was among the first to sug­gest that the peo­ple should decide who the next jus­tice is.
Cruz argues some­one an icon­ic right-wing lumi­nary as Scalia should be decid­ed on by vot­ers. Cruz who fan­cies him­self the ulti­mate author­i­ty on con­sti­tu­tion­al law knows the peo­ple does not decide on Supreme Court nom­i­nees. What he is hop­ing for is a Republican President who will pick a right-wing ide­o­logue to replace Scalia.

Ted Cruz inci­den­tal­ly men­tions the American Constitution more than any liv­ing breath­ing human being. Yet when it comes to nar­row par­ti­san pol­i­tics Cruz indis­crim­i­nate­ly and expe­di­tious­ly ditch­es the con­sti­tu­tion in favor of rad­i­cal right-wing par­ti­san ideology.
So too has Marco Rubio, Chuck Grassley who heads the Judiciary Committee, Orrin Hatch, and even Donald Trump the cir­cus clown who now seem like­ly to head that party.

On Wednesday March 16^th President Barack Obama announced in the rose Garden his deci­sion to nom­i­nate Judge Merrick Garland to be the next Justice to serve on the Supreme Court.

Garland, a grad­u­ate of Harvard Law School, is the chief judge of the D.C. cir­cuit court. He was appoint­ed by President Bill Clinton. Garland was pre­vi­ous­ly con­sid­ered for the Supreme Court seat that Justice Sonia Sotomayor was select­ed for in 2010. At the time, Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah told Reuters that Garland was “a con­sen­sus nom­i­nee” who would win Senate con­fir­ma­tion with bipar­ti­san sup­port with­out a problem.“He would be very well sup­port­ed by all sides” as a Supreme Court nom­i­nee, Hatch said in 2010, accord­ing to Reuters, “and the pres­i­dent knows that.”.

Republicans argue that a fig­ure as con­se­quen­tial (my char­ac­ter­i­za­tion) as Antonin Scalia should be replaced by a deci­sion of the vot­ers. This is a most absurd the­o­ry , to begin with Antonin Scalia was con­se­quen­tial to the right only.
Scalia rep­re­sent­ed nar­row right-wing inter­est. He val­ued cor­po­ra­tions over peo­ple, the pow­er­ful over the pow­er­less and the Oligarchical struc­ture over the rights of individuals.
What they are say­ing is that the are unwill­ing to con­sid­er the President’s pick for the court because they want to play out their hand hop­ing for a Republican Presidential win in the fall, upon which they can place anoth­er rad­i­cal right-wing ide­o­logue on the court. This kind of bla­tant politi­ciz­ing of the process cre­ates a sit­u­a­tion in which judges do leg­is­late from the bench.

What makes this stance most hyp­o­crit­i­cal is that Republicans con­sis­tent­ly squeal about judges over­step­ping their con­sti­tu­tion­al respon­si­bil­i­ty by leg­is­lat­ing from the bench. Ironically this is exact­ly what they espouse by adopt­ing this intran­si­gent obstruc­tion­ism . They are hop­ing for a Republican win in November so they can stack the Court with right-wing ide­o­logues like Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.

They argue that Democrats have advo­cat­ed for exact­ly the same thing, con­ve­nient­ly cit­ing the abstract Biden rule. The sup­posed Biden rule emanat­ed in 1992 when then Delaware Senator Joe Biden said .…

“Were there a vacan­cy, Biden argued, Bush should “not name a nom­i­nee until after the November elec­tion is com­plet­ed,” and if he did, “the Senate Judiciary Committee should seri­ous­ly con­sid­er not sched­ul­ing con­fir­ma­tion hear­ings on the nom­i­na­tion until after the polit­i­cal cam­paign sea­son is over.” “Senate con­sid­er­a­tion of a nom­i­nee under these cir­cum­stances is not fair to the pres­i­dent, to the nom­i­nee, or to the Senate itself,” he con­tin­ued. “Where the nation should be treat­ed to a con­sid­er­a­tion of con­sti­tu­tion­al phi­los­o­phy, all it will get in such cir­cum­stances is par­ti­san bick­er­ing and polit­i­cal pos­tur­ing from both par­ties and from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.”

According to the Washington post Biden defend­ed his com­ments by say­ing he was speak­ing about a hypo­thet­i­cal (there was no court vacan­cy at the time). He was also speak­ing in June of an elec­tion year — not February — which is around the time some­thing called the Thurmond Rule has tra­di­tion­al­ly kicked in. (Though con­gres­sion­al experts say the Thurmond Rule is less an actu­al rule and more of a guide­line that both par­ties call on when polit­i­cal­ly expe­di­ent on when the Senate can shut down the judi­cial con­fir­ma­tion process.)

Whatever hap­pens vot­ers with the abil­i­ty to sift through hyper­bole and bull should hold Republicans account­able come November . Many Republican Senators , Governors and Congressional Representatives are up for re-elec­tion in November .
There are far more vot­ers who iden­ti­fy as Democrats than there are vot­ers who iden­ti­fy as Republicans. The Republican par­ty should be penal­ized for this bla­tant obstruc­tion­ism for polit­i­cal expediency.
Voters elect a President to do a job , the sen­ate is also elect­ed to it’s job, the job of the sen­ate is not to obstruct a pop­u­lar twice elect­ed president.
Insisting that the peo­ple should be allowed to deter­mine which nom­i­nee is placed on the supreme court is right in one sense.
The peo­ple spoke deci­sive­ly and unequiv­o­cal­ly when they elect­ed Barack Obama to the Presidency of the United States, not once but twice.
The peo­ple have already spoken.
Decisively !!!