Senate Democrats hit the ground running once President Obama announced his pick for the Supreme Court, Merrick Garland. They held a rally in front of the Supreme Court to kick off their "Do Your Job" campaign targeting their recalcitrant Republican colleagues, and leader Harry Reid is promising an all-out offensive.
“You’re going to be surprised at how hard we’re going to work to make sure this is on the front pages of all the papers,” Reid told reporters with Garland.
Meanwhile, Senate Republicans are having a hard time figuring out exactly what they should do. While they're bumbling, they've decided to outsource the dirty work.
And where the Senate itself would typically take the lead role in vetting a Supreme Court nominee, there are no plans this time for the Judiciary Committee to hire its usual complement of additional staffers to conduct such checks. Beth Levine, a spokeswoman for the panel’s Republicans, confirmed Wednesday that there are no plans to hire additional investigators for a Garland probe.
That has given outside groups a central role in the coming fight, especially on the Republican side. Most prominent among them is the Judicial Crisis Network, which has coordinated the conservative response to the Scalia vacancy and has pledged to run millions of dollars in television ads to derail Obama’s nominee.
They can't be seen directly attacking this nominee. They need to try to pretend like they're staying out of the fray, like they're just sitting back so that "the voters decide" and that it's the Democrats who are politicizing the court. It's not going to work, but it's all they got.
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