Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the Senate GOP leadership’s insistence that it will not consider a Supreme Court nominee until the next president takes office is “very different” than her vote against President George W. Bush’s Supreme Court nominees when she was in the Senate.
“I did oppose Justice Alito and as you say Chief Justice Roberts,” Clinton said, adding that after “after meeting with them, listening to them,” she did not think their approach “would be the best for the country.”
“I voted against [Alito]. We had a process. The nomination was made and we went through the process,” Clinton said. “What the Republicans today are saying is you can’t vote on anything. We don’t want the president to send us a nominee. I think that is very different.”
She was pressed on the fact that she supported a filibuster of Justice Alito, which would have robbed him of a formal vote.
“That’s the way the Senate operates,” she said, before praising Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), who was present at the town hall being held in his home state.
“Once a nominee goes to the Senate, then you go through the process. There should be hearings both from the nominee and other witnesses, then it should be presented to the floor and then you use the procedures that are available and eventually, as you know, Justice Alito was confirmed,” she said.
Alito is a racist dweeb-face who “could not recall” being a part of The Concerned Alumni of Princeton. (You can guess they weren’t concerned about the homecoming parade).
Alito is on the bench.
What a complete bullshit comparison. The issue is not that the Republicans shouldn’t have the right to vote down the nominee, it’s that they should go through the process of holding hearings and taking votes because that is their fucking job. Or to put it another way, that’s the bare minimum the Constitution requires of them.
They want to vote down a nominee, maybe a second one as they run the clock out? Fine – it sucks, it’s irresponsible, it’s hypocritical – but that is their prerogative. But have the decency to give the nominee a fair hearing, and the guts to take a stand, take a vote, and be judged for it…but of course that is exactly what these political cowards are trying to avoid.
But way to go media, fishing for the closest substitute for a false equivalency when THE PRESIDENT HASN’T EVEN NOMINATED ANYONE YET.
She is 100% correct. There is a huge difference between voting against a nominee and refusing to allow anyone to be nominated. That anyone can’t see that is a mystery to me, and perhaps just willful blindness on their part.