Obama has started work to pick Supreme Court justice: White House
By Jeff Mason and Roberta Rampton
RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif./WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House on Monday said President Barack Obama had started preliminary discussions with his team about naming a Supreme Court justice nominee and accused Republicans of "bluster" for saying they would not confirm his pick.
White House spokesman Eric Schultz told reporters that administration officials had been in touch with Senate offices about the process, which is shaping up to be an epic fight between Republicans and Democrats in a presidential election year.
Republicans, who control the Senate, say Obama should put off naming a replacement for conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, who died over the weekend, and leave it to the next president to decide. Democrats say it is the president's responsibility and right to make the choice.
Americans choose a new president in November elections. Obama leaves office in January 2017.
Schultz laid out some of the criteria that Obama would consider in his decision making process, including adherence to precedent and bringing one's own ethics and moral bearings to decisions on the court in which the law is not clear.
"The president seeks judges who understand that justice is not about some abstract legal theory, or a footnote in a casebook, but it is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of peoples’ lives," he said.
Schultz said there was clear precedence for the U.S. Senate to confirm a Supreme Court justice during a presidential election year and called on lawmakers to give Obama's eventual nominee a fair hearing and a timely vote.
Scalia's death leaves the court evenly divided between liberal and conservative justices.
"The Constitution does not include exemptions for election years or for the president’s last term in office. There’s no exemptions for when a vacancy could tip the balance of the court,” Schultz said.
Republican lawmakers and presidential candidates have made clear they would not support an Obama nominee.
Schultz said such "bluster" had been used before on issues such as raising the U.S. debt limit but ultimately failed.
“This is not the first time that Republicans have come out with a lot of bluster, only to have reality ultimately sink in,” he said. “At each pass, they took a hard line. They tried to play politics. But ultimately, they were not able to back up their threats.”
Obama is in California for a summit with Southeast Asian leaders. He returns to Washington on Tuesday.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Roberta Rampton; Editing by Alan Crosby)
