Judge Merrick Garland (photo credit: Senate Democrats via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0)
Increasingly, Republican politicos in Washington, D.C. are considering confirming President Obama’s proposed replacement for Antonin Scalia, Merrick Garland.
In an interview with Business Insider, Senator Jeff Flake, R-Ariz said that Republicans should confirm Garland if they lose the presidential election this upcoming November.
“Obviously if we lose the election and lose the White House, then we ought to move quickly to confirm [Garland],” Flake said. “And I think if it becomes apparent that we aren’t going to win the White House — if we know in October that it’s not good — then we’ve got to move forward at that point.”
Other Republicans have quietly embraced this strategy, too, including senators Mark Kirk, R-Ill and Susan Collins, R-Maine.
“It’s hard to imagine getting a nominee out of Clinton who’s less liberal than Garland,” a senior GOP aide told Philip Wegmann at The Daily Signal. “If you’re concerned about the balance of the court, you’re concerned about that possibility and it provides an incentive to take a serious second look at his nomination.”
Flake, Collins, Kirk, and any other Republican senator considering pushing for approving Garland have clearly forgotten the true purpose of their office. To vote to appoint Garland is to vote to betray the American Founding and the conservative principles for which they claim to stand.
