Hillary Clinton had scathing words for the GOP blockade of President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee in a speech Monday that connected the hardball stance to a pattern of Republican obstruction and the rise of Donald Trump.
The battle over filling the high court vacancy opened by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia “is revealing the worst of our politics,” she said at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“The same obstructionism that we’ve seen from Republicans since the beginning of the Obama administration, the same disregard for the rule of law that’s given rise to the extremist candidacies of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz,” Clinton said. “It’s corroding our democracy, and it has to stop.”
Clinton’s speech came as Senate Republicans have refused to even hold a hearing for Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, because they argue the consideration of a successor to Scalia should wait until a new president is elected.
Clinton called out Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the chair of the Judiciary Committee, which typically hosts Supreme Court nomination hearings, for saying the hardline position was a matter of giving the American people a voice.
“As one of the more than 65 million Americans who voted to re-elect Barack Obama, I’d say my voice is being ignored right now because of their obstructionism!” she said. “You know, we chose a President. We chose him twice. And now Republicans in the Senate are acting like our votes didn’t count, and that President Obama is not still our nation’s leader.”
Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, a Republican who is in a tough re-election battle, also got a shout-out from Clinton for his refusal to consider Garland’s nomination.
“When you leave here, I urge you to call the office of Senator Johnson, e-mail him, contact him, if he has a Facebook page, go on, express your opinion,” Clinton said.
Clinton additionally criticized some of the decisions made by the Supreme Court’s conservative majority before Scalia died, including cases that gutted the Voting Rights Act, overturned gun control laws and gave corporations more freedom to influence elections.
“Conservatives know exactly how high the stakes are. For years, they have used aggressive legal strategies to accomplish, through the courts, what they failed to accomplish through legislation,” Clinton said, pointing to lawsuits targeting Obamacare, measures to address climate change and Obama’s executive actions on immigration.
Clinton warned about the kind of Supreme Court nominee Trump would appoint before blaming the GOP for the appeal of his campaign.
“Donald Trump didn’t come out of nowhere. What the Republicans have sown with their extremist tactics, they are now reaping with Donald Trump’s candidacy,” she said.
THIS!
Scalia made sure our votes didn’t count in 2000.
Why should Republicans in the Senate think our votes count now?
If Mitt were POTUS today, the GOP would be scrambling to confirm his nominee as quickly as possible.
I have to say this was the best speech I have heard in the elective period. She hit all the right points (Citizens United, abortion, the power of business-centric court actions, ACA, etc.), and called out (somewhat politely, as opposed to her Republican candidates) the politicians of obstruction. SCOTUS and other federal judge nominees are the lifeblood of our nation, and she really seemed to hit this one out of the park, although it did seem to lose some sharpness with the personal story at the end.
EXCELLENT speech … watch it, please.