Reid: GOP meetings with Garland are first signs of caving

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) says the willingness of some Republicans to meet with Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland shows that GOP opposition is starting to crack. 

Reid on Thursday predicted that Republicans would eventually agree to hearings and a vote on Garland, whom President Obama nominated a day earlier.

{mosads}“The caving has already started. This may not sound like a great breakthrough, but we have a significant number of Republican senators [who] have said they’ll meet with him,” he said.

“I think that’s a breakthrough. It’s a breakthrough that they’ll sit down and talk to this good man.”

Garland has served nearly two decades on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the second-most powerful court in the nation, and he is viewed as politically moderate.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has signaled willingness to meet with Garland, as have six other Republicans: Sens. Mark Kirk (Ill.), Susan Collins (Maine), Kelly Ayotte (N.H.), Rob Portman (Ohio), Jeff Flake (Ariz.) and James Inhofe (Okla.). 

But several — including Ayotte and Portman, who face tough reelection races in the fall — have made clear they will do so only as a courtesy. They are pledging to stick with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) position that the nomination should not move until after the November elections.  

Reid dismissed the possibility of holding hearings and a vote on Garland in the lame-duck session after Election Day, something Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) suggested Wednesday.

“I think we should do it now. It’s unfair to have this man treated differently than anybody else,” he said.

Reid argued that the voters have a right to watch and hear Garland’s views examined during a committee hearing.

He said “of course it’s possible” that Garland would be confirmed in December, after the election, but he warned it would set a bad precedent for future Supreme Court nominations.

In 2013, Reid, who at the time was serving as Senate majority leader, triggered a controversial procedural tactic known as the “nuclear option” to exempt most judicial nominees from filibusters. 

But it did not apply to Supreme Court picks, who still must overcome 60-vote procedural hurdles before a vote on final confirmation.

Reid said he deliberately kept the 60-vote threshold for Supreme Court nominees in place to maintain the Senate’s tradition of giving even the most controversial candidates an up-or-down vote.

He noted that Democrats moved President Reagan’s most controversial nominee, Robert Bork, to the floor in 1987, when they controlled the chamber. Bork was defeated but nevertheless received full consideration.

Many Democrats also opposed Justice Clarence Thomas when President George H.W. Bush nominated him in 1991. Democrats, then in the majority, held a vote, and he won confirmation.

“I saved the supermajority [threshold] for Supreme Court on purpose to return to those days where we do what’s the right thing,” Reid said.

“Would we have been a better country — I shouldn’t answer my own question — if we filibustered Thomas? The decision was made not to and, at the time, it was the right thing to do,” he said.