Texas Guv Slams Roberts: SCOTUS ‘Deserves To Be Swept Up Into’ Politics

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) on Thursday accused the Supreme Court’s conservative Chief Justice John Roberts of being the “tip of the spear in playing politics,” arguing the high court “deserves to be swept up into the political process.”

Abbott was weighing on the current refusal by Senate Republicans to consider President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, according to the Houston Chronicle.

“Chief Justice John Roberts knowingly, clearly and unabashedly re-wrote Obamacare twice. What we are seeing is nothing more than naked politics being played by the United States Supreme Court,” Abbott said during a press event at the Heritage Foundation.

Abbott is not the only Republican to blame Roberts, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush and has a conservative voting record, for making the Supreme Court the political hot potato that it’s considered now.

Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-IA) warned Roberts against publicly commenting on the current nomination fight. Roberts so far has stayed mum, but days before Justice Antonin Scalia’s death, he decried how political the Senate’s confirmation process had become. Grassley later said Roberts was “part of the problem.”

In his remarks Thursday, Abbott defended the GOP blockade in the Senate and said the court had “shed its clothing as being guardians of the law.”

“The United States Supreme Court is more of a political body than it has ever been in the United States of America,” Abbott said. “And because, on its own, by its own fault, as an institution, it has chosen to be a political body, it deserves to be swept up into the political process.”