New York Times
By Amy Chozick
March 28, 2016
Hillary
Clinton seized on the struggle over the Supreme Court vacancy on
Monday, issuing a scathing indictment of congressional Republicans and
blaming their “extremist tactics” in opposing
President Obama for Donald J. Trump’s rise as the leading Republican
candidate.
“If
you want to know where that kind of obstructionism and recklessness
leads, just look at the Republican race for the presidency,” Mrs.
Clinton said in a speech at the University of Wisconsin
here as she sought to capitalize on the tumult unfolding in the
Republican primary. She also offered an impassioned plea in support of
Mr. Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick B. Garland to replace Justice
Antonin Scalia, who died in February.
“They
say a Trump nomination will set their party back decades. I agree,”
Mrs. Clinton told the crowd. “But Donald Trump didn’t come out of
nowhere.”
She
reminded the audience of Mr. Trump’s previous calls to see Mr. Obama’s
birth certificate and of declarations by Senator Mitch McConnell of
Kentucky, the majority leader, that the Supreme
Court vacancy should not be filled until after Mr. Obama leaves office.
“When
you have a party dead set on demonizing the president,” Mrs. Clinton
said, “you may just end up with a candidate who says the president never
legally was the president at all. Enough
is enough.”
Mrs.
Clinton has often expressed support for Mr. Obama’s policies, which can
endear her to a president who remains widely popular among Democrats.
But
extending that support to the Supreme Court vacancy also signals that
she is looking beyond the Democratic primary against Senator Bernie
Sanders of Vermont and is seeking to use the
issue to appeal to independents and even moderate Republicans who might
be wary of a Trump administration.
“As
scary as it might be, ask yourselves, what kind of justice will a
President Trump appoint?” Mrs. Clinton asked, to gasps from the
audience.
“As
you know, he believes Muslims should be banned from entering the
country because of their faith,” she said. “What would that mean for a
nation founded on religious freedom?” The struggle
to replace Mr. Scalia has provided Mrs. Clinton with an opportunity to
thrust the Supreme Court to the top of voters’ concerns.
In
her speech on Monday, she noted that two Supreme Court justices will be
older than 80 when the new president takes office, and she urged voters
to “please make sure the court factors into
your decision.”
“Whoever
America elects this fall will help determine the future of the court
for decades,” Mrs. Clinton said, listing a range of issues — from voting
rights and abortion, to immigration,
climate change and money in politics — that could reach the court in
coming years.
Republicans, she said “are fighting hard to make sure the Supreme Court includes as many right-wing justices as possible.”
Fifty-three
percent of Americans say the Senate should hold a vote on Mr. Obama’s
nominee, while 42 percent said the Senate should wait until next year
for the new president to nominate someone,
according to the latest CBS News/New York Times poll. And while most
voters have not yet formed an opinion about Mr. Garland, a vast majority
— 68 percent — said that who sits on the Supreme Court is at least very
important to them.
A
spokeswoman for Mr. Trump did not immediately return an email request
for comment on Monday. But some conservatives quickly rebuffed Mrs.
Clinton’s speech, accusing her of politicizing
the court. “If Hillary Clinton is criticizing you, you must be doing
something right,” said Adam Brandon, the chief executive of
FreedomWorks, an advocacy group aligned with the Tea Party. “The Senate
is performing its constitutional responsibility” in delaying
the process until a new president takes office.
The
issue is just the latest over which Mrs. Clinton has tried to portray
Mr. Trump as dangerous. Last week, the day after the deadly terrorist
attacks in Brussels, she took a break from
fund-raising in Palo Alto, Calif., to deliver a sharp rebuttal of Mr.
Trump’s foreign policy prescriptions, saying that his proposals to
rethink the United States involvement in NATO and to bar non-American
Muslims from entering the country would alienate
allies and empower enemies.
“Slogans
aren’t a strategy. Loose cannons tend to misfire,” Mrs. Clinton said on
Wednesday. “What America needs is strong, smart, steady leadership to
wage and win this struggle.”
Hours
after Mr. Scalia died last month, Mr. McConnell said he would not
schedule hearings on a nominee until after Mr. Obama left office, a
proposal endorsed by Mr. Trump, who declared, “Delay,
delay, delay.”
Mrs. Clinton promptly called Mr. McConnell’s stance “totally out of step with our history and our constitutional principle.”
But on Monday, she went further, accusing Mr. McConnell of undermining Mr. Obama and ignoring the American people.
“We
chose a president. We chose him twice,” Mrs. Clinton said. “And now
Republicans in the Senate are acting like our votes didn’t count and
that President Obama is not, still, our nation’s
leader.”
The
Supreme Court vacancy also gave Mrs. Clinton a chance to take aim at
another adversary, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and
the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Mr.
Grassley has been one of the key Republicans investigating Mrs.
Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state
and has focused on the “special government employee”
status of one of her closest aides, Huma Abedin, now the vice
chairwoman of the Clinton campaign.
“He
says we should wait for a new president because, and I quote, ‘The
American people shouldn’t be denied a voice,’ ” Mrs. Clinton said of Mr.
Grassley. “Well, as one of the more than 65
million Americans who voted to re-elect President Obama, I’d say my
voice is being ignored right now.”
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