Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) has a simple request for Democratic Minority Leader Harry Reid: Stop lying about the Supreme Court nomination process. On Wednesday, the senator shamed Reid and his party for attempting to fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court after Antonin Scalia's death without so much as blinking.
"The Minority Leader claims that the Senate has a constitutional duty, a constitutional obligation, to hold a prompt hearing and timely floor vote for the President’s nominee to the Scalia vacancy," Hatch said. "The Hill yesterday quoted him saying this: 'The obligation is for them to hold hearings and to have a vote. That’s in the Constitution.' By my count, the Minority Leader has made this claim here on the Senate floor more than 40 times. Well, no matter how many times he says this falsehood, it is still false."
No line in the Constitution corroborates Reid's story, Hatch argued, before noting that Reid’s Senate history proves he is one huge contradiction. Back in the election year of 1992, when President George Bush was in office, Reid did not make a peep when then-Senator Joe Biden insisted the Senate defer the confirmation process until a new president was elected. Only now that the environment serves Reid’s political interests, Hatch intones, is the minority leader changing his tune.
As soon as President Obama put Merrick Garland in the spotlight, Reid has been ready to put him on the bench. Hatch knows that's because Garland appears to align with the Democrats' liberal agenda.
The process, Hatch argues, shouldn't change based on the political party in power.
"I say this to my Democratic colleagues: do you really want to stand behind a completely fictional, patently false claim like that? Do you really want to base your position on what the Washington Post Fact Checker called a politically convenient fairy tale?"