Wednesday, March 16, 2016

THE BIDEN RULE

The so-called "Biden" Rule has been cited, by Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, as being a justification for not even considering Obama's nomination to fill a vacant seat on the Supreme Court.

Some time, in the not too distant, future, a Republican President will nominate a Supreme Court justice, in an election year, and will request an up or down vote on his nomination.  The Democrats will then bring up this "Biden Rule", on which the Republicans are basing their refusal to process the nomination.  Republicans will then, smirkingly, I am sure, inform the Democrats:


  • There is no such thing as the "Biden Rule".  The remarks by Biden was an opinion and not a precedent.
  • There was no nominations before the Senate, in 1992, when Biden made the remark and  therefore, would have been purely hypothetical.
  • Biden was referring to nominations posed by a President late in a Presidential year when there would not be adequate time to do the proper vetting of a candidate.  Biden indicated that a late summer date as being inadequate, certainly not March when there would be ample time.
  • Any utterance, by any Democrat, is only binding on Democrats and certainly not any Republican.





1 comment:

  1. Proving, yet again, that Republicans are the party of the "flip-flop". They often countered their own positions (setting the precedent) in many of their retorts to Democrat positions.

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