For extra on the Senate Republican management race, watch “Inside Politics with Manu Raju,” this Sunday at 8 a.m. EDT.
Washington
CNN
—
The following president may have the ability to dramatically reshape the Supreme Court docket with a number of appointments. However for Kamala Harris, that may not be doable.
If Republicans regain management of the Senate, a President Harris must depend on the subsequent GOP chief to schedule a vote on a Supreme Court docket nominee.
And in interviews with CNN final week, the 2 main candidates to exchange Senate Minority Chief Mitch McConnell wouldn’t decide to placing a Harris Supreme Court docket nominee on the ground for a affirmation vote.
“It relies upon,” Texas Sen. John Cornyn stated when requested if a Harris Supreme Court docket choose would get a vote in a Senate that he would lead. “Clearly, they must undergo the committee course of, and so it will rely upon that. After which I feel it will additionally rely upon who the president nominates.”
Cornyn added: “If I’m able to make the choice, I’m not going to schedule a vote on some wild-eyed radical nominee, which I do know she would like to nominate. However that might be my intention.”
Senate GOP Whip John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, had an analogous chorus.
“We’ll cross the bridge once we come to it,” Thune stated when requested final week if he’d enable a Harris Supreme Court docket choose to be confirmed. “However, , it in all probability depends upon who it’s and that’s the benefit of getting a Republican Senate.”
The feedback are the most recent signal of how the Supreme Court docket affirmation course of has devolved into an all-out partisan affair, a far cry from the times when presidents would typically get their nominations confirmed even by a Senate managed by the other get together. Whereas either side blames the opposite for the breakdown, McConnell’s 2016 determination to depart vacant the seat of the late Justice Antonin Scalia for greater than a yr — successfully robbing then-President Barack Obama of a Supreme Court docket seat — continues to reverberate within the Senate.
The following GOP chief can be determined within the lame-duck session of Congress after the November elections. To this point, simply Cornyn and Thune, together with Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, are operating to exchange McConnell. The present GOP senators, together with the incoming freshman class, will every get a vote. However whereas Thune and Cornyn are broadly seen because the likeliest to succeed McConnell, such races are tough to handicap as a result of senators don’t should publicize their votes, that are achieved by secret poll.
In the meantime, the GOP is closely favored to win the Senate in November because the map is tilted of their favor, with Democrats having to defend seats in three crimson states, together with seven different aggressive seats. They solely have two pickup alternatives — Texas and Florida — and people are seen as lengthy photographs.
Meaning if Harris wins, she very effectively could possibly be squaring off in opposition to a Republican Senate that would stymie her agenda or drive her to cater to its calls for.
And if Trump is president once more, he might face his personal limits, since each Thune and Cornyn have promised they wouldn’t intestine the Senate filibuster on any concern, so it will nonetheless require 60 votes — which means some Democratic votes — to advance most laws.
Requested how he would work with a President Harris, Cornyn deadpanned: “We might be the loyal opposition.”