GOP invokes Biden Rule No election-season Supreme Court nominees

Biden in ’92: No election-season Supreme Court nominees

By Sarah Wheaton

02/22/16 04:36 PM EST

Updated 02/22/16 07:19 PM EST

Republicans are delighted that a recently unearthed Joe Biden speech appears to be a strong endorsement of the GOP’s current Supreme Court strategy.

“Politics has played far too large a role in the Reagan-Bush nominations to date. One can only imagine that role becoming overarching if a choice were made this year, assuming that a justice was announced tomorrow that he or she was stepping down,” Biden said on the Senate floor in June 1992, not long after Bill Clinton won the Democratic nomination to challenge then-President George H.W. Bush.

“A process that is already in doubt in the minds of many will become distrusted by all,” Biden continued. “Senate consideration of a nominee under these circumstances is not fair to the president, the nominee or to the Senate itself.”

Nearly 24 years later, after C-Span posted the old video, Republicans are offering Biden a hearty second — at least to the part of the 90-minute speech where he calls on the Senate to “seriously consider” not scheduling confirmation hearings and dismissing the potential impact of a short-handed court.

“The precedent of not confirming SCOTUS justices nominated in election years was established by both parties,” the office of Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) tweeted on Monday, with a link to a 2-minute clip of the old footage.

In the aftermath of Antonin Scalia’s death, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was quick to say that any nominee to fill the vacancy should wait until after the coming election.

The clips and quotes Republicans seized on, however, ignored a passage buried deep in the transcript where Biden called for a “compromise” pick, much as he’s done in the past week.

Read more: https://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/joe-biden-supreme-court-nominee-1992-219635#ixzz410xD3RQl