I’ve hinted at this before. But a little-discussed aspect of the Trump insurgency and drive to become First Citizen is that the GOP has been remarkably successful in recent years in scheduling its collective freakouts in non-election years: debt default crisis (2011), Cruz Obamacare government shutdown (2013). There are numerous examples. Obviously by its nature, a meltdown or freakout in a primary contest and nomination fight is by definition during an election. But managing the schedule so that the freakouts and elections don’t overlap is a pretty big thing – especially presidential elections. The last time there was a scheduling breakdown was during the 1998 Clinton impeachment freakout. And, as you’ll remember, a predicted GOP wave election turned into an almost unprecedented, if still modest, Democratic pick up in the House in the sixth year of a two term president’s tenure in office.
Orrin Hatch is obviously a big fan of Merrick Garland. Not just in the sense that he voted to confirm him to the appeals court nearly two decades ago and now Dems want to use that against him. But in a real, this-is-my-kind-of-Democrat kind of way.
Here’s Hatch in 1997 singing Garland’s praises. But even as recently as last week Hatch was like, yeah, right, Obama will never nominate someone like Garland when he can pander to the liberal base. Oops.
And now you’ve got Hatch undercutting the GOP stonewall by saying he’d consider confirming Garland in a lame duck session if Hillary Clinton wins in November.
This idea that Senate Republicans will roll over if Hillary Clinton wins in November and go ahead and confirm Merrick Garland in a lame duck session really undercuts their whole argument about why they can’t even consider his nomination now. Nina Totenberg reports this lame duck thing was signaled to the White House via back channels. Sen. Orrin Hatch is on board with it. Lauren Fox has other GOP senators expressing irritation with the idea. And you can understand why. Her report coming soon.
The list of Republicans who are willing to meet with President Obama’s SCOTUS nominee.
I want to be careful not to over-interpret this, but a few more Republican senators have said today they would be willing to meet with Merrick Garland. That is at odds with what Senate GOP leadership and conservative outside groups have been calling for, mainly because they want to avoid going down a slippery slope where it becomes about the nominee rather than their blanket opposition to Obama naming the next Supreme Court justice.
Here’s the latest on the president’s nominee, who will be introduced in the Rose Garden shortly. You can watch here.
Obama will announce his Supreme Court nominee in the Rose Garden at 11 a.m. ET
Tonight is likely the turning point where, if we open our eyes to see it, we can see the general election match up between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
I did not think Sanders would still be fighting Clinton to close to a draw in states like Illinois. But Clinton will win either 4 of 5 or 5 of 5 states tonight, all big states, three of them major swing states. More importantly, Clinton’s edge in pledged delegates is now close to overwhelming. The Democrats don’t have winner take all primaries. So it’s not possible catch up with wins in a string of big states. Even if Sanders won every remaining state by a narrow margin, he’d probably still lose.
It’s really a bit much that at least so far none of the networks have carried any of Bernie Sanders’ speech. Tonight was a massive win for Clinton. But Sanders is still in the race. Kasich, meanwhile, who has something like a courtesy win in his home state of Ohio but is not even really in the race, had his whole speech covered.
Citing an unnamed source, Reuters reported late Tuesday that President Obama had narrowed his short list of potential Supreme Court nominees to two men and could announce his nominee as early as Wednesday.
The final two candidates for the seat left open by the death of Antonin Scalia are Judge Sri Srinivasan and Judge Merrick Garland, both of whom sit on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, Reuters reported, citing a “source familiar with the selection process.”