67% of Americans Say the Senate Should Hold Hearings on a Supreme Court Nominee

Opinion   |   Dave Andrusko   |   Sep 22, 2020   |   4:59PM   |   Washington, DC

Let’s get to the headlines six weeks to the day before the November 3rd General Election…

*“The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday… shows that 50% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job performance. Forty-nine percent (49%) disapprove”—Rasmussen Reports

*“I will be announcing my Supreme Court Nominee on Saturday, at the White House!” —Tweet from President Trump

*“Romney backs vote on Supreme Court nominee, clearing way for Trump: The announcement means Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has enough votes to move forward with Trump’s pick”—POLITICO

*“Biden: I’m Not Going to Say Whether I’ll Try to Expand the Supreme Court”—headline to story written by Jim Geraghty at National Review

*“[T]there lies the growing threat from some Democrats that if Trump’s nominee is confirmed, and if Biden wins the election, and if Democrats win the Senate and House, then Democrats will add some number of justices to the Supreme Court — pack the Court — to ensure its liberal tilt. It’s an enormous issue for the Supreme Court and its role in American governance. And now, Biden is refusing to say where he stands on that, too.”—Byron York

And

*“The question of holding hearings and a vote on confirming a new justice immediately became an issue with Justice Ginsburg’s death, as it had following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016. In this poll, conducted in the days before Ginsburg’s death, a substantial majority of respondents of both parties say that if a vacancy occurred during the 2020 election year, the Senate should hold hearings on a nominee, with 67 percent saying hearings should be held and 32 percent saying they should not be held. Views on holding hearings do not vary much by partisanship, as shown in Table 3”—Marquette University Law School poll

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As discussed for over a week, the presidential approval numbers for President Trump remain in the 50% range, according to Rasmussen Reports. This daily poll of likely voters is very much worth watching.

Of course, the news that dominates conversation is the impending no-holds-barred battle over President Trump’s proposed nominee to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died Friday. The President had said previously it would be Friday or Saturday; today he tweeted that the announcement will be Saturday at a time yet to be announced.

We know with the same certainty that the sun rises in the East that pro-abortion Democrats will hold nothing back and that respect for the truth, let alone fair play, is already the first casualty of the Destroy the Nominee Machine. Their campaign of character assassination will be enthusiastically aided and abetted by the Establishment Media, as was the case with the unconscionable mugging of now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

I will not go into the details, because that gives oxygen to the slurs. But a Newsweek hit job on one leading candidate for the Supreme Court bashed her for belonging to a certain Catholic charismatic group said to have inspired the hysterical  ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’. In fact it was another Catholic charismatic group.

Details, details. As pro-abortion Joe Biden prophetically said, “We choose truth over facts.” Need I even add the obvious? It is their “truth,” which has no need for mere facts and avoids an honest pursuit of the truth like the plague.

Biden has zero intention of announcing who is on his short (or long) list to be his Supreme Court nominee, if he wins the presidency. The One-on-one interview yesterday with WBAY in Manitowoc, Wisconsin produced this memorable exchange:

Question: If Trump’s Supreme Court pick goes through, but you win the election, Democrats take over Senate and maintain the House, would you consider adding more Supreme Court justices to the bench?

Biden: It’s a legitimate question, but let me tell you why I’m not going answer that question.

And then this incredibly (and totally lack in self-awareness ) follow-up comment:

Because it will shift the focus, that’s what he wants, he never wants to talk about the issue at hand, and he always tries to change the subject.

It’s hard to miss that Biden didn’t want “to talk about the issue at hand,” so he “tries to change the subject”—precisely what he accusing the President of!

Jim Geraghty put it perfectly:

What is striking about Biden’s position is that he might expand the court, he might not, but that he’s not willing to talk about it, and the American people aren’t allowed to know if his thinking has changed, because “it will shift the focus.”

Republicans enjoy only a three-seat advantage in the Senate—53-47. Two Republican senators said over the weekend that they opposed filling the seat until after the election.

But as POLITICO wrote

Sen. Mitt Romney said Tuesday he would support a floor vote to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, essentially clinching consideration of President Donald Trump’s nominee this year despite the impending election.

On Monday, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said on Fox News, “We’re going to move forward in the committee; we’re going to report the nomination out of the committee to the floor of the United States Senate so we can vote before the election.”

Finally, the Marquette University Law School poll, taken just before Justice Ginsberg’s passing, is fascinating. Whatever pro-abortion Democrats may think, exactly two-thirds  [67%] of the respondents said “the Senate should hold hearings on a nominee.”

LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. This post originally appeared in at National Right to Life News Today —- an online column on pro-life issues.