This article titled “Merrick Garland a ‘tough man’ who can take brickbats, says Harry Reid” was written by David Smith in Washington, for theguardian.com on Friday 18th March 2016 02.32 UTCJohn Fawcett has joined the firm as Partner
Judge Merrick Garland is a “tough man” ready to take whatever Republicans throw at him in the rancorous battle over his supreme court nomination, the Senate minority leader, Harry Reid, said on Thursday.
Garland met Reid and Vermont senator Patrick Leahy, the top Democrat on the Senate judiciary committee, on Capitol Hill in Washington a day after his name was put forward by Barack Obama.
But he did not meet Senate Republicans, who are holding out against confirmation hearings or a vote and, with the court’s ideological balance at stake, reiterated their stance that the next president should make the selection.
After a long career in the law, Garland, 63, suddenly finds himself at the centre of political trench warfare. “This is all new to him,” Reid told reporters outside his office following their conversation. “Politics is not something he’s been involved in.”
But he expressed confidence in Garland’s ability to handle the pressure. “If you’re a trial lawyer, as he is, this is the culmination of anybody’s legal life, to be selected to go on the supreme court of the United States. I think he will be confirmed, but if I were in his shoes I’d be willing to take all the brickbats and pieces of fruit thrown at him in different non-figurative ways.”
He added: “I just think it’s a great honour for him to have been selected and I think he’s willing, he’s a tough man, he’s willing to take whatever they have to throw at him.”
Asked if he had given Garland advice on how to handle the political storm, Reid replied: “I just told him to be himself, to be calm and collected, and I think that’s his nature anyway. He is a very smart man. We talked about the many cases he’s presented at courts and to juries. I think he’s going to do just fine.
“He’s not going to get into philosophical discussions with me or anyone else. If somebody wants to lecture him about what should be done in the court he’ll listen, but he will make no comment on what he would do.”
Reid also repeated his condemnation of Republicans for refusing to consider the president’s “affable” and highly qualified lifetime appointment to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, who died last month.
“Why are they afraid to meet him?” he demanded. “Why are they afraid to hold hearings? Are they afraid the American people are going to watch these hearings and demand they do something more than they are demanding now? I don’t get what the Republicans are trying to do.”
The office of the Republican Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, dismissed Thursday’s visit as a stunt “orchestrated” by the White House. McConnell has been adamant that he will not even meet the nominee, contending that a vacancy has never been filled so late in a presidential term when the opposing party controls the Senate. He has pointed to past remarks by Vice-President Joe Biden to support his case.
Earlier on Thursday, Democrats suggested that the facade of Republican opposition is crumbling. Speaking outside the supreme court, Chuck Schumer, senator for New York, said in response to a question from the Guardian: “We are seeing cracks on the Republican side.
“About five or six members have agreed already to meet with the nominee and I think what happened is they saw how stellar the nominee was and they realised how bad it would be not to … They’re feeling the heat and we believe we’ll see many more cracks over the next two weeks.”
The party is tying itself to presidential frontrunner Donald Trump, claimed Schumer, who added its position is more untenable now that the nominee has a human face and is no longer theoretical. “It’s hard when the American people saw what a down-the-middle lawyer he was, not an ideologue, and a decent man. He even showed some emotion that was so touching when he thanked the president for nominating him. I think the average senator says, ‘I look like a real impolite sort of person to not even see this guy.’
“It’s a step at a time. Many a good number of them put their foot in the water yesterday by saying they’d see him. There’ll be more of those. The next step will be to have a hearing.”
Garland, an appeals court judge and former federal prosecutor, is widely seen as a moderate acceptable to many Republicans, who also could be concerned about losing control of the Senate to the Democrats in the November vote.
Republicans Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Susan Collins of Maine, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, Orrin Hatch of Utah and Rob Portman of Ohio have expressed an openness to meeting Garland but not necessarily to considering his nomination. Some face competitive re-election contests in November. Reid singled out Collins for taking a “courageous” stand.
Hatch, former chairman of the judiciary committee and its current No 2 Republican behind chairman Chuck Grassley, in 1997 backed Garland’s nomination to his current position on the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit. The Senate confirmed Garland in a bipartisan 76-23 vote.
Hatch told National Public Radio: “To this day, I think well of Merrick Garland, and I think he’s a fine person. I remain convinced that the best way for the Senate to do its job is to conduct the confirmation process after this toxic presidential election season is over.”
Conservative lobbyist Curt Levey, executive director of the FreedomWorks Foundation, rejected the idea that Republicans are divided over the issue. “What they’re pointing to as cracks are several of the senators saying they would meet the nominee,” he said. “But they have also said they will use those meetings to explain there will not be a hearing. We’re a far cry from cracks when it comes to no hearings and no votes.”
Levey predicted that the Republicans will prevail in what he described as a “unique situation”.
“The White House will make it an issue as long as they can but when it’s obvious that the nominee won’t be confirmed, people will lose interest,” he said. “I don’t see it as a big issue by the time we reach the election in November.”
Some Republicans have broken ranks, however, by floating the possibility of waiting for the “lame duck” session: the final months of a president’s term after his successor is elected in November but before a new Congress convenes in early January.
Arizona senator Jeff Flake suggested that if the Republicans lose the presidential election, the Republican-led Senate “ought to look at this nomination in a lame duck session in November”. He told Fox News: “I would rather have a less liberal nominee like Merrick Garland than a nominee that Hillary Clinton, if she were president, would put forward.”
But Democrats flatly rejected the notion. Schumer said: “The fact that several of them entertained lame duck shows that their whole theory, they don’t really believe it. If they believed it they wouldn’t entertain a lame duck because a lame duck is before a new president takes office. It shows that what they’re really trying to do is just be political and ideological and get as far right a nominee as they can.
“If they win the presidency, they wouldn’t do a lame duck. If they don’t win the presidency, they would do a lame duck. There’s no constitutional, legal logic to what they’re saying. It’s pure and raw politics.”
Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota added: “The words ‘lame duck’ are not in the constitution, so I think that if they can have a hearing in the lame duck, they can have a hearing now.”
And Angus King, independent senator for Maine, said: “I don’t understand what people are worried about if they have hearings. Are they afraid they’ll like him? I don’t get that. Or somehow they’ll be hypnotised into voting a way they don’t want to vote?”
Meanwhile Obama on Thursday tried to win over key interest groups and activists, holding a conference call to explain “that this is a high priority of his, and that he hopes that this would be a priority that people all across the country would share”, the White House spokesman, Josh Earnest, said.
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