Opportunities, and risks, for both parties in the SCOTUS fight
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is leading his fellow senators against confirming President Obama’s choice for the Supreme Court before the November election. (Photo: J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
Republicans and Democrats are already using the Supreme Court vacancy created by Antonin Scalia’s death Saturday as a political fundraising tool, entrenching partisan narratives that have defined both parties since President Obama took office and revealing dueling priorities for the 2016 elections.
Democrats are arguing that the immediate, outright GOP commitment to refuse even to consider an Obama nomination — not just block it on the floor of the Senate — is another example of the obstructionism that has characterized the Republican majority in the Senate. Feeling more confident about its chances of retaining the White House, the Democratic Party’s response has been largely driven by the goal of winning back the Senate majority it lost in 2014.
For Republicans, the hardline stance against any potential nominee reflects the interests of leading presidential candidates in energizing the party’s base by turning the election into a referendum on Obama. But there are risks at the Senate level that such a tactic could backfire in moderate or Democratic-leaning states where those same frontrunners are not especially popular, dragging down the rest of the Republican ticket. In 2016, Republicans will be defending 24 seats in the Senate, including seven in states Obama won twice, and congressional GOP leaders have seen internal polling suggesting the Senate majority could be at risk if frontrunners Donald Trump or Ted Cruz become the party’s nominee.
After Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced he would not cooperate in filling the Supreme Court vacancy, the Senate Majority PAC — the super-PAC created in 2011 by allies of top Senate Democrat Harry Reid to raise unlimited money for Democratic candidates — claimed that the Republican leader had made his entire caucus “more vulnerable.”
“Mitch McConnell’s partisan obstructionism isn’t just unprecedented, but it’s indefensible. His refusal to do his job undermines our country’s judicial system, and today he just made his entire caucus that much more vulnerable this November, especially considering voters are already fed up with dysfunction in Washington,” a spokesman for the group said. “So much for all that rhetoric about how the ‘majority is working’ under Republican control.”
Nearly all of the vulnerable Republican senators up in 2016 have lined up behind McConnell’s strategy: Rob Portman of Ohio, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Patrick Toomey of Pennsylvania and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. The one notable exception is Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois, who assumed Obama’s Senate seat in 2010 and is widely considered the most endangered Republican senator of the cycle.
The GOP senators who are backing McConnell’s stance are counting on a couple of as yet unproven premises: first, that the number of conservative voters in their states who will be energized by the confrontation will outweigh the moderates or independents who may be alienated by it, and second, that they will all win their races and a Republican Senate will get to confirm a nominee in 2017. The most significant downside to blocking Obama now is the possibility that Democrats would win both the White House and the Senate and ultimately confirm a more liberal nominee than Obama is likely to choose in the present circumstances.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., needs to pivot quickly from his failed presidential campaign to his Senate reelection bid and is using the Supreme Court battle to do it. (Photo: Andrew Harnik/AP)
Meanwhile, conservatives and anti-establishment Republicans see an opening for themselves too. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who suspended his presidential campaign to focus on Senate reelection in November, has been the quickest in using the Supreme Court issue to campaign. He has leveraged the vacancy as a way to turn his presidential donor list into a source of funds for his Senate campaign. He’s sent out two fundraising emails since Scalia died, with subject lines of “I plan to lead” and “One heck of a fight,” respectively, to focus on his role in the Senate in blocking the nomination of a justice of Obama’s choosing.
“I plan to lead the fight to stop them in the Senate. Patriot, will you stand with me as I do everything I can to block President Obama’s attempt to silence the opinion of the American public?” his first fundraising email read. “The passing of Justice Scalia has made it more clear than ever that the role of the Senate is vital to maintaining liberty.”
In the second email asking for money, Paul said: “I’m not going to take it lying down and let the president have his way. I’m not going to let him change the entire process of law in this country without one heck of a fight.”
The question remains what that fight might look like in the Senate, whether Republicans will hold hearings and allow floor votes or forgo scheduling those basic processes altogether.
On Tuesday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who initially came out in support of McConnell’s position that no justice should be confirmed until 2017, told a local radio station he would “wait until a nominee is made before I make any decisions” on whether to convene a confirmation hearing.
The Senate is in recess this week and the White House is expected to send them a name for confirmation when they return. What happens next in the so-called world’s greatest deliberative body might not even include a formal debate, but it is sure to be partisan. The gamble, especially for Republicans, is whether their base voters are happier when senators are not doing their jobs.
