The messaging that conservatives seem to have settled on regarding the Supreme Court vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia is that somehow Americans won’t have a say in who the next justice is unless the confirmation of any nominee is stalled until after the next president takes office. (No matter that the current president was, in fact, elected by the American people for this very job.)
The first TV ad out of the gates in the Supreme Court battle comes from the Judicial Crisis Network, which uses this messaging in an effort to pressure Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley to stand strong on denying a hearing to any Obama nominee for the seat.
The screen shows softly lit stock footage of diverse Americans as a voiceover says:
It’s ‘We the People.’ Sometimes the politicians forget that. The Supreme Court has a vacancy and your vote in November is your only voice. Sen. Chuck Grassley agrees: the American people should decide. This isn’t about Republicans or Democrats. It’s about your voice. You choose the next president, the next president chooses the next justice. Call Sen. Chuck Grassley. Thank him for letting the people decide.
This is what Vice President Biden might call “a bunch of malarkey.”
At the same time as her group was preparing this ad about the supposed high American ideals of not letting the president fulfill his constitutional obligation to appoint Supreme Court justices, the Judicial Crisis Network’s top attorney, Carrie Severino, was telling a conservative news network something very different, saying that failure to block an Obama nominee would be “political malpractice” on the part of Republicans.
In a statement shortly after Scalia’s passing, Severino made it clear that this stand was specifically about conservatives’ animosity toward Obama, whom, she said, is “the last person” who should be appointing the justice’s successor.
And, of course, we always have to note that during the George W. Bush administration the Judicial Crisis Network was called the Judicial Confirmation Network and that its stated mission was to ensure that “the confirmation process for all judicial nominees is fair and that every nominee sent to the full Senate receives an up or down vote.” As far as we know, the Judicial Confirmation Network didn’t oppose any of the 28 federal judges who were confirmed during Bush’s final year in office.
But it definitely “isn’t about Republicans and Democrats”!
