The President has promised the American people that he will nominate a successor to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia sooner than later. Although precedent has been set for a president’s nomination to the Supreme Court during his final year in office, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has promised to dismiss any nomination before the November election; ignoring the Constitutional requirement and privilege of Mr. Obama.

Harry Reid, who is the Senate Minority Leader, and has announced that he will not seek another term, factually states the serious problem with McConnell’s tactics.

“In recent years the Republican leader and his Republican senators have done everything possible to grind the wheels of government to a halt,” Reid said in his first speech on the Senate floor following Scalia’s death. “But now we are seeing something from the Republican leader that is far worse than his usual brand of obstructionism. We are seeing an unprecedented attempt to hold hostage an entire branch of government.”

McConnell, who once promised that he would do nothing until he was guaranteed that President Obama would be a one-term president, and the man who led the Senate in its policy of ‘just saying no,’ offered the following weak statement.

“If the shoe were on the other foot, do any of you think the Democrat majority in the Senate would be confirming a Republican president’s nomination in the last year of his term?” McConnell asked reporters last week. “Of course not.”

The truth is that McConnell is being very short sided, or is ignoring the polls and potential winner of the White House in November. President Obama is far more likely to nominate a more impartial Justice than any of the four candidates. Unless radical and extremists Trump or Cruz win the election, both Clinton and Sanders are very likely to offer a more progressive candidate.

To display the importance of having a nine-member Court, we must only look to this very day. The SCOTUS is presently deciding on a Texas law which is intended to prevent poor women from seeking an abortion. It would eliminate the greater number of clinics in the state by requiring outrageous medical credentials for those who work in these organizations. Other ‘red’ states have adopted similar laws.

At present, the three Justices who were nominated by Republican presidents are in favor of upholding the law. Four Justices have indicated that the law must be struck down because it creates a hardship for poor women seeking a legal abortion. The decision is likely in the hands of Anthony Kennedy. If he sides with the four who oppose the law, it will be struck down. However, if he agrees with the opinion of those appointed by the right wing, nothing will change; the law will stand. The Court may choose to never review the case again.

Many times in the past years Kennedy was the deciding factor, but the decision was a five-to-four majority. The Court cannot function without an odd number of Justices.

This final battle between McConnell and Reid may be the most important in their combined 60 years of serving in the Senate. The people are at stake, not political ambitions.

Bluntly put; McConnell is completely wrong on this one, and may cost him seats in the Senate in November.

Op-Ed

By James Turnage

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Photo Courtesy of KAZ Vorpal

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