Saturday on MSNBC on the news of Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia’s passing, network host Rachel Maddow speculated on what she thought could happen in terms of a replacement for Scalia.
Maddow suggested Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson as a replacement, since he has already made it through the confirmation process of the U.S. Senate.
“If I had to throw one scenario into the mix, this might be the kind of time when the president would choose a nominee who effectively has already been vetted, somebody who can kind of jump the line in terms of the United States Senate, somebody who has recently been through a rigorous confirmation process, somebody who, for example, is a cabinet level official in the Obama administration already,” Maddow said. “The first person who springs to mind for that kind of a scenario is Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, who is a very reserved and non-ideological person but has served in several administrations as a top Pentagon lawyer, as a very trusted national security expert and legal mind and is now running the biggest agency in the government outside of the Pentagon or the Veterans Affairs department. Somebody like that could conceivably be so non-objectionable to the United States Senate that maybe they would allow that sort of confirmation process to go ahead, even when another judicial nominee, who might more typically be on the short list would get held up by this Republican Senate trying to hold out for the hope of a Republican president to pick a nominee.”
(h/t RCP Video)
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.