{"id":232237,"date":"2016-03-17T20:42:20","date_gmt":"2016-03-17T20:42:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=232237"},"modified":"2016-03-17T21:18:16","modified_gmt":"2016-03-17T21:18:16","slug":"senator-orin-hatch-reverses-merrick-garland-nomination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/senator-orin-hatch-reverses-merrick-garland-nomination\/","title":{"rendered":"Senator Orrin Hatch Reverses Himself on Merrick Garland Nomination"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/p>\n

On March 13th, Republican\u00a0U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch said<\/span><\/a>\u00a0of Obama\u2019s process to nominate a replacement for the deceased former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, \u201cThis is all about the election. The President told me several times he\u2019s going to nominate a moderate, but I don\u2019t believe him. He could easily name Merrick Garland, who is a fine man. He probably won\u2019t do that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

On March 16th,\u00a0President Obama announced<\/span><\/a>, \u201cToday I am nominating Chief judge Merrick Brian Garland to join the Supreme Court.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On March 17th,\u00a0Senator Hatch said<\/span><\/a>, \u201cI remain convinced that the best way for the Senate to do its job is to conduct the confirmation process after this toxic Presidential election season is over.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In other words: Senator Hatch is saying that between now and 9 November 2016, the Supreme Court should be hearing and deciding cases as it currently is, with only 8 of the Court\u2019s 9 seats occupied. President Obama nominated the exact person whom Hatch said is \u201ca fine man.\u201d\u00a0In 1997, Hatch had said of Garland,<\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u201cI know him personally, I know his integrity, I know his legal ability, I know of his honesty, I know of his acumen. He belongs on the Court [of Appeals for the DC Circuit].\u201d However, if a Republican wins the Presidency (which means the nominee couldn\u2019t be named until some time after 20 January 2017), then Hatch will want that new President to nominate the person to fill the empty seat \u2014 not the Democratic President we now have \u2014 not even when that Democratic President has chosen the very person whom Hatch was recommending he pick<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

What, then, did Hatch mean when he said on March 13th, \u201cHe could easily name Merrick Garland\u201d?<\/span><\/p>\n

Did he mean it would be easy for the words \u201cMerrick Garland\u201d to be spoken by President Obama? Or did he mean that Merrick Garland would have Hatch\u2019s support if the existing President nominated him? If Hatch meant the latter, then Hatch was lying. If he meant the former, then he was a fool.<\/span><\/p>\n

Either way, U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch, the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee and therefore the most influential person other than the U.S. President himself on this entire matter, is obviously a hypocrite.<\/span><\/p>\n

He\u2019s a liar, like all Republican politicians and almost all Democratic politicians.<\/span><\/p>\n

Regardless of what anyone thinks of President Obama (and I, for one, detest him as a liar himself who is as much a pawn of Wall Street<\/span><\/a> as Republicans are), the Republicans in Congress have been so incredibly hostile and uncooperative with this President during his Presidency, there\u2019s nothing in U.S. history that\u2019s comparably bigoted against any U.S. President. Do they think they can get away with it just because he\u2019s \u2018black\u2019 and they don\u2019t think of Blacks as human beings, and they know that in Republican primary elections the voters also don\u2019t, and will therefore renominate these bigots, and so they\u2019ll keep their Senate seats \u2014 as such bigots?<\/span><\/p>\n

Some Democrats are vile, but all Republicans are \u2014 isn\u2019t that crystal clear here?<\/span><\/p>\n

Anyone who supports the Republican Party is just a KKK\u2019er without his white robes and mask on. That\u2019s what Republican \u2018conservatism\u2019 actually stands for: American racist fascism \u2014 the U.S. type of nazism. They don\u2019t want to be \u2018politically correct\u2019 because nazis don\u2019t \u2014 not anywhere, in any nation. At least conservative Democrats feel embarrassed to be like that \u2014 they don\u2019t want the face under their \u2018politically correct’ mask to be seen even by other Democrats. In the Republican Party, the bigotry is so out-in-the-open. Even such a largely conservative black Democrat as President draws their revulsion. The only type of Black whom they can support is blatant Uncle Toms, such as Colin Powell and Ben Carson \u2014 if even those. And even a black President under whose leadership Blacks have been harmed economically even more than Whites (who, unlike Blacks, have recovered at least a little bit from George W. Bush\u2019s economic crash) cannot do Blacks enough harm so as to gain the support of Republicans. (And only Republican news-sites<\/span><\/a> have publicized the fact that Obama has been even worse for Blacks than he has been for Whites<\/span><\/a>, but it\u2019s the case; Blacks don\u2019t care enough to even notice it \u2014 they\u2019ve been blind to it, and want more of the same under his chosen white successor Hillary Clinton, who likewise has done nothing but words for Blacks.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps if Whites accept white racism, the fact that Blacks accept black racism (i.e., that they support even pro-Establishment Blacks like Obama) isn\u2019t particularly remarkable. But the way that the Republican Party has behaved regarding America\u2019s first black President is a historical embarrassment upon this entire nation \u2014 and it is blatant.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even if Senator Orrin Hatch tries to be \u2018politically correct\u2019 about his display of extraordinary racism, the white face under his all-but-KKK verbal hood is visible to anyone who has eyes, and enough light to be able to see through his obvious hypocrisy. The consistent Republican obstructionism throughout Obama\u2019s Presidency has been simply stunning. <\/span><\/p>\n

Republicans were almost as obstructionist when Bill Clinton was in the White House, because he pretended very well to be a white \u2018soul brother,\u2019 but for Republicans now to be promising to hold up a Supreme Court nominee \u2014 urged upon this President by Orrin Hatch himself \u2014 for nearly 8 months if the Democrat wins, and for more than 10 months if the Republican wins, is simply unconscionable. It\u2019s so blatant, they\u2019ll almost certainly have to back-peddle and cave-in so as not to suffer major losses in the upcoming congressional elections. The fact that anyone votes for these frauds is a pathetic commentary upon today\u2019s American \u2018democracy.\u2019 <\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse On March 13th, Republican\u00a0U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch said\u00a0of Obama\u2019s process to nominate a replacement for the deceased former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, \u201cThis is all about the election. The President told me several times he\u2019s going to nominate a moderate, but I don\u2019t believe him. He could easily name Merrick Garland, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":232238,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[951,29,522,14930,540,942],"class_list":{"0":"post-232237","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"tag-clinton","9":"tag-democrats","10":"tag-obama","11":"tag-orin-hatch","12":"tag-republicans","13":"tag-supreme-court"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}