WASHINGTON (AP) _ The top Republican in the U.S. Senate served notice to President Barack Obama on Tuesday that the Republicans will not rubber stamp his choice to succeed the retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter.
“The president is free to nominate whomever he likes,'' Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, said. “But picking judges based on his or her perceived sympathy for certain groups or individuals undermines the faith Americans have in our judicial system.''
McConnell's Republicans are turning to a conservative Southerner as their point man on Obama's nominee, signaling that they will not shy away from a protracted fight despite risks of being cast as obstructionist.
Sen. Jeff Sessions' ascension as the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee comes more than 20 years after the panel rejected him for his own federal judgeship during the Reagan administration over concerns that he was hostile toward civil rights and was racially insensitive.
Oddly, Sessions would replace Sen. Arlen Specter, a moderate who was one of just two Republicans in 1986 to oppose Sessions as a U.S. district court judge. Specter left the Republicans last week to become a Democrat, creating the vacancy atop the committee just as Souter announced his retirement.
The choice of Sessions has excited conservatives who see him as a sharp lawyer with well-established legal views after a career as a prosecutor and Alabama attorney general.
Sheldon Goldman, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, agreed that Sessions has a firm grasp on the issues but said making Sessions “the face of the party'' for the Supreme Court nomination might not play well symbolically.
Goldman, who has written a book on judicial nominations, said Specter's defection resulted in part from the perception that the Republican Party has moved too far right.
“And instead of responding to that by placing a moderate as the ranking Republican, they go for a very conservative Southern Republican who represents everything that has driven Specter and other moderate Republicans out of the party,'' Goldman said.
Sessions is among the most conservative senators, taking hard-line positions on issues such as immigration and affirmative action.
His nomination as a judge two decades ago ran into trouble when civil rights groups complained that he had pursued politically motivated voter-fraud charges against black leaders as a U.S. attorney in south Alabama. Others came forward to say he had made racially insensitive comments, including calling groups like the NAACP “un-American'' and agreeing with someone else's statement that a white civil rights lawyer was “a disgrace to his race.''
Sessions said the comments were taken out of context or fabricated. He and his supporters argued that Democrats were using the allegations to reject Sessions over honest ideological differences.
Sessions later was elected Alabama's attorney general in 1995 before winning his Senate seat in 1996.
“It's a thrill as someone who spent 15 years full-time in federal courts to have this opportunity,'' he said.
He said any nominee is entitled to a fair hearing but also should expect “probing questions,'' and he did not rule out a Republican-led delaying debate under the right circumstances.
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On the Net:
Sen. Jeff Sessions: http://sessions.senate.gov/
Pictured above is Sen. Jeff Sessions.
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