Judge support...

Biden: Plenty of judges with 'unanimous' GOP support

By Nick Gass

The White House’s replacement pick for the late Justice Antonin Scalia will be someone with bipartisan appeal, Vice President Joe Biden indicated in a radio interview aired Thursday.

“The Senate gets to have a say, and so in order to get this done the president is not going to be able to go out, nor would it be his instinct anyway, to pick the most liberal jurist in the nation and put them on the court,” Biden told Minnesota Public Radio. “There are plenty of judges are on high courts already who have had unanimous support of the Republicans.”

Biden, who is in Minnesota this week to promote the administration’s infrastructure efforts, rejected outright the notion that Obama should leave the seat open until the next president takes office in January 2017.

“To leave the seat vacant at this critical moment in American history is a little bit like saying, ‘God forbid something happen to the president and the vice president, we’re not going to fill the presidency for another year and a half,’” he remarked.

One judge thought to be on the administration's short list is Sri Srinivasan, who serves on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and was approved by the Senate 97-0 in 2013. Republican presidential candidates have since last Saturday’s report of Scalia’s death said they want Obama to hold off nominating a justice until voters have their say in November.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who clerked with Srinivasan and voted to confirm him to the D.C. Circuit, said Wednesday that he would not confirm any Supreme Court nominee, including his longtime acquaintance, until after the election.

A CBS News/New York Times national poll released Thursday showed a deep partisan divide among Americans on what they want President Barack Obama to do with the vacancy. While 82 percent of Republicans said they preferred to wait until the next president is elected before another justice is nominated, 77 percent of Democrats said they wanted Obama to go through with choosing Scalia’s successor and submitting the nominee to the Senate.