By Mike Sacks, From The National Law Journal

GOP: “Consensus view” was to take no action at all on Obama’s upcoming pick.
The Senate Judiciary Committee’s Republican members have closed ranks against holding hearings or a vote on any nominee President Barack Obama puts forward for Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat until after the November election.
Emerging from a committee meeting on Tuesday, GOP members told reporters the “consensus view” was to take no action at all on Obama’s upcoming pick. They formalized their position in a letter to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, signed by every Republican on the committee.
“[W]e wish to inform you of our intention to exercise our constitutional authority to withhold consent on any nominee to the Supreme Court submitted by this President to fill Justice Scalia’s vacancy. Because our decision is based on constitutional principle and born of a necessity to protect the will of the American people, this Committee will not hold hearings on any Supreme Court nominee until after our next President is sworn in on January 20, 2017,” the letter says.
Their position comes a day after Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Arizona, said he would stand with party leadership on the matter.
“One would have to go back more than a century to find a scenario where a president’s nominee for the Supreme Court was confirmed by the opposition party in the Senate when the vacancy occurred during an election year,” Flake said in a statement on Monday. “I’m not about to break new ground in the Senate, particularly when any nominee could so drastically shift the balance of the court.”
Flake eliminated any hope a nominee might have had to gain the approval of—let alone a hearing from—a closely divided Judiciary Committee. Last year, Flake and two other Republicans, Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, crossed party lines to join the committee’s nine Democrats to approve Loretta Lynch’s attorney general nomination.
Hatch and Graham made clear soon after Scalia died on Feb. 13 that they would not break ranks this time around.
“Majority Leader [Mitch] McConnell has said this should be delayed until the next presidency. … I kind of agree with that, because it’s clearly part of the politics of the presidential race right now, and I don’t want to see it be a political hoopla, or a political mess, which it could become,” Hatch told Salt Lake City’s Fox13 when news broke of Scalia’s death.
Graham told reporters the same day he would only back a “consensus” Obama nominee that could get the votes of half the Republican’s 54-member caucus. “He’s not going to put on the court a liberal who’s well qualified,” Graham said.
Graham often repeated “elections have consequences” when he broke from his party to vote for Obama’s previous two Supreme Court nominees, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, in 2009 and 2010, respectively. He emphasized that his current deviation from that mantra is a response to the Senate’s elimination of the filibuster to allow the confirmation of three Obama picks for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
“If Hillary Clinton wins the White House and she puts a liberal who’s well qualified, I’ll vote for them,” Graham said.
During a briefing to reporters on Tuesday, Judiciary Committee member Sen. Chris Coons, D-Delaware, called for Obama to nominate the “most centrist” candidate. “I don’t think this moment calls for” a person who would be as liberal as Scalia was conservative, Coons said.
Coons’ position, even if followed by the White House, now looks unlikely to influence his Republican counterparts on the committee or the Senate Republican leadership, which remains committed to delay the full Senate’s consideration of a nominee until after the November presidential election.
In his floor statement on Tuesday, McConnell was unequivocal. “The Senate has its constitutional right to provide or withhold consent. In this case the Senate will withhold it,” McConnell said. “The Senate will appropriately revisit the matter after the American people finish making in November the decision they’ve already started making today.”
This story was updated to include a letter from the Senate Judiciary Committee to Maj. Leader McConnell.
IMAGE: Charles Grassley. Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/NLJ
For more on this story go to: http://www.nationallawjournal.com/id=1202750400960/Senate-Judiciary-Committee-Republicans-Close-Ranks-on-Scalia-Seat#ixzz416i0SHRW