Obama: Will name indisputably qualified nominee for court

Obama discussed the nomination process in a news conference in Rancho Mirage, Calif., where he hosted members of the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations for a two-day summit.

If the Democratic party controlled the Senate, Barack Obama would now be able to name a replacement, and those upcoming cases likely to produce a closely divided court would simply be held over until the new justice was confirmed.

“I would wait until the nominee is made before I would make any decisions” about confirmation hearings, Grassley, chairman if the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in an interview aired on Radio Iowa.

Obama argued Tuesday that “the Supreme Court’s different”. Republicans have opposed almost all of Obama’s major initiatives during the first seven years of his presidency, and filling the court vacancy is shaping up as a monumental election-year fight.

“Schumer said we should wait until after the election and then let the next president nominate”, Republican Sen.

In a separate event on Wednesday after a meeting with district superintendents in Dallas, Cornyn said he didn’t think having eight out of the nine justices of the court until 2017 was a big deal.

Scalia, the court’s leading conservative, died unexpectedly Saturday, prompting a political skirmish over his replacement, both in the Senate and on the presidential campaign trail. Senator Mark Kirk, up for re-election in Obama’s home state of IL, issued a statement calling debate so soon after Scalia’s death “unseemly”.

Obama has pledged to nominate someone “in due time” despite fierce pushback from conservatives, and the White House has reportedly begun to draw up lists of potential choices.

On the other side of the aisle, however, 29 of 54 GOP senators say Obama shouldn’t nominate a successor, while 25 lawmakers either “have not replied to us or replied ambiguously”, the Times reports.

Vice President Biden will attend Scalia’s funeral Mass Saturday at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, Earnest said.

Asked about his record, Obama acknowledged Democrats have played politics with nominations, too, through what he described as “strategic decisions” that ultimately did not block the president’s nominee.