Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday that Republicans’ calls to leave Supreme Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat vacant until after 2016 are “absolutely, thoroughly irresponsible.”
Biden also compared the Senate Republicans’ efforts to create gridlock in the judicial branch to choosing to leave the presidency vacant should anything happen to the President.
“To leave the seat vacant at this critical moment in American history is a little bit like saying, ‘God forbid something happen to the President and the vice president, we’re not going to fill the presidency for another year and a half,'” Biden said in an interview with Minnesota Public Radio.
Within hours of Scalia’s death, Republicans, led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, declared they would not consider any Supreme Court nominee put forward by President Obama, saying the next president should pick Scalia’s successor.
Obama has said he would nominate a replacement “in due time.”
But Biden said Obama wouldn’t nominate “the most liberal jurist in the nation,” but would instead pick a successor that Republicans could support.
“The Senate gets to have a say, and so in order to get this done the president is not going to be able to go out – nor would it be his instinct anyway – to pick the most liberal jurist in the nation and put them on the court,” he said. “There are plenty of judges who are on high courts already who have have unanimous support of the Republicans.”
