On Tuesday, Republican-led senate emphatically ruled out taking action on whoever President Barack Obama nominates to fill the Supreme Court vacancy. Reports say that such political move intends to thwart the president's power to alter the court's ideological balance.
The Chicago Tribune reported that Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is the one who ruled out any action of Obama's nominees. McConnell said that the Senate will not hold hearings or vote for any nominee to supplant conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, who died on Feb. 13, and that the Judiciary Committee has unanimously agreed.
"I've said repeatedly and I'm now confident that my conference agrees that this decision ought to be made by the next president, whoever is elected," Senator McConnell added.
Senator McConnell has been considered to be a Republican nemesis of President Obama during his seven years in the office. The US Constitution states that the Senate has the power to reject or confirm a president's Supreme Court selection.
Democrats were enraged by the ruling and inserted Supreme Court politics into the center of an already edgy clash for the White House, as CNN reported. The Democratic Party vows unremitting pressure on Republicans to back down or face the consequences on the upcoming voting in November.
The US presidential election will take place on the 8th of November and Republicans are hopeful that one of their peers will finally sit in the White House. Reuters reported that the overwhelming view of Republicans in the Senate was that such vacancy should not be filled by a lame-duck president.
Obama's administration and Democrats in the Senate condemned McConnell's stance and called the political power move as an "obstruction on steroids." Many Republicans have sought to clump dozens of Obama's initiatives, including the transfer of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Obamacare, immigration policy, climate change, and Iran's nuclear deal.
The Democratic Party is badly outnumbered in the 100-member Senate, which failed short of the 60 votes needed to pass controversial bills much less a Supreme Court nomination.
