Hatch urges Obama to pick centrist for Supreme Court

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) told President Barack Obama on Wednesday he should choose a unifying nominee for the Supreme Court because of the partisan nature of the healthcare battle.

Hatch, who met with Obama at the White House, repeated the GOP warning against picking a “judicial activist,” saying that would only widen divisions created by the heated healthcare fight.

“A judicial activist would be a poor and unnecessarily divisive choice at any time,” Hatch said in a statement. “After the highly contentious healthcare debate, it is more important than ever that the president choose someone who will get overwhelming support from the American people and the United States Senate.”

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Obama has met with and personally interviewed several candidates to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens; Vice President Joe Biden has also sat in on the meetings. Gibbs said Wednesday the president is close to selecting a nominee. An announcement could come any day.

Hatch, a former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he “gave the president my perspective on what constitutes a qualified nominee to the Supreme Court.”  

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“It shouldn’t be someone who substitutes their own personal views for the law of the land, and who refuses to follow the Constitution of the United States,” Hatch said.

After the Utah senator offered that advice to Obama, he turned harshly critical of the president’s approach to judicial appointments in a speech  Wednesday afternoon to the Cato Institute.

Hatch accused Obama of endorsing court opinions that follow his political philosophies and criticizing those that don’t, like the recent Citizens United ruling, which allows corporations and unions to spend unlimited funds on election activities.

Hatch said that Obama uses code words like “empathy” to describe activist judges.

“Last summer, President Obama talked often about how judges should be guided by their empathy,” Hatch said, referring to comments Obama made about what he was looking for in a Supreme Court justice. “This year, the buzz-phrase seems to be ‘core constitutional values.’ This latest version must be seen in the context of President Obama’s previous positions and how he has implemented them in the judges he has already nominated and appointed. This is the same old thing, just another cloaking device for judges who seek to control the Constitution.”