A new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll reveals that in the wake of Antonin Scalia’s death voters are deeply at odds — mostly along party lines — over whether the Senate should confirm a new Supreme Court justice now or wait until the new president is sworn in next year.
It appears that each of the parties’ constituencies agree with their party’s approach: 81 percent of Democrats believe that the Senate should vote to appoint someone this year; 81 percent of Republicans feel that the Senate should push off a vote until next year when a new president is elected.
Overall, 43 percent of those polled agree that the president should nominate and the Senate should approve someone this year and 42 percent believed the process should be delayed until after the election. Independents split exactly the same way as the overall survey: 43 percent favor this year; 42 percent favor next year.
The poll of 800 registered voters was conducted Feb. 14-16, in the days immediately following Scalia’s death. The margin of error for the survey was 3.5 percentage points.
What are the splits for just “President should nominate” vs. “President should not nominate”? That’s at the heart of Mitch McTurtle’s pre-emptive strike - that the President should not fulfill his Constitutional duty. Never mind about how the Senate reacts after the nom - undoubtedly they will delay and filibuster and get up to all sorts of shenanigans to avoid a vote. That’s the role they’ve chosen for themselves, so whatever.
It’s the suggestion that the President shouldn’t even put up a nomination that is unprecedented. And no doubt based in the sure knowledge that a 9-month SC nomination battle is not going to make the GOP look better to voters in November.
Fortunately, it doesn’t matter what any voter thinks about this - the Constitution is clear what should happen - impact on voters will (hopefully) show during the November election. ® voters upset if the Senate confirms might kick them all out. Too bad.
Dem voters will hopefully be fired up enough regardless to flood the polls in November, keeping the White House in (D) hands, and putting the Senate there, too…
Those numbers will change in the weeks ahead.
So much for respect for the rule of law.
I remember, as a kid, visiting the Mr. Lincoln exhibit at Disneyland. Mr. Lincoln said that it wouldn’t be any foreign power to take America down, if America were to fall. He said it would be failure of Americans to respect the rule of law. Looks like we are half way there.