WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama's choice for the Supreme Court commenced courtesy calls with senators Thursday as Democrats began the next phase of their drive to put election-year pressure on Republicans refusing to consider any Obama pick.
The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said that Republicans were acting as a "check and balance" against Obama. Democrats, meanwhile, prepared to welcome the nominee.
A day after his selection set the battle lines in a major fight over the court, Obama's choice to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia, Merrick Garland, met with Democratic leaders on Thursday -- steering clear of the Republican leader who has vowed the Senate will ignore Garland's nomination and wait for the next president to fill the seat.
For McConnell, the Capitol Hill visit was a stunt "orchestrated" by the White House, his spokesman said.
Garland, who serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, met separately with Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. After the meeting with Leahy, the mild-mannered jurist faced a throng of reporters and clicking cameras but said nothing.
"I talked to him about where the hurdles are, and I talked to him about what I thought would happen if we actually follow the oath that we've all taken to uphold the Constitution," Leahy said.
Reid also said he braced the judge, a nominee of former President Bill Clinton, for the bombardment ahead.
"I just told him to be himself," Reid said. "I think he's willing to take whatever they can throw at him."
More than a dozen Senate Democrats stood in front of the Supreme Court, using the telegenic backdrop to underscore their calls for Republicans to give Garland a hearing. Democrats cited polling showing public support for Senate consideration of the nomination and linked the court fight to Donald Trump -- the front-runner for the GOP nomination who is widely condemned by adherents of the party's traditional power structure.
"If Republicans stand in the way and refuse to do their job, it will only be because they want Donald Trump to pick the next nominee," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.
The success of the Democrats' plans hinge in part on rallying their grass roots to the cause -- a task complicated by Obama's nomination of a moderate with little public record on many issues valued by the progressive wing of the party.
In an interview with NPR, the president said he found the Republicans' argument that the electorate should weigh in "puzzling."
"Well, in fact the American people did decide -- back in 2012 when they elected me president of the United States with sufficient electoral votes," Obama said.
Liberal and labor groups planned events for next week, when the Senate is out of session and senators are back home, pressuring Republicans on their home turf. The events include teacher rallies in Cleveland, Cincinnati and Lima, Ohio, aimed at Sen. Rob Portman; union members mobilizing in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and targeting Sen. Patrick Toomey; and activists attending town-hall and other Iowa re-election events staged by Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley.
Republicans prepared their defense.
One Nation -- run by Steven Law, a former McConnell chief of staff and the head the GOP-aligned American Crossroads super PAC -- began 10 days of television advertising today in Des Moines, Iowa, aimed at supporting Grassley, a key opponent of confirming an Obama nominee.
The ad says an Obama appointment to the court could "radically transform" laws governing landownership, gun rights and religious freedom and says, "Tell Sen. Grassley, keep fighting for the right of Iowans to decide the Supreme Court's future."
The conservative Judicial Crisis Network said it will begin a two-week, $2 million TV ad campaign on Monday supporting GOP senators in Iowa, New Hampshire and Ohio and pressuring Democrats from Colorado, North Dakota and West Virginia.
Also, groups including the Tea Party Patriots and the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List were planning to send members to town-hall meetings in states like Iowa and New Hampshire to show their backing for blocking consideration of Garland and were organizing phone calls to lawmakers' offices to register support.
Still, Republicans were mindful of the risks of closing their doors to this nominee, while past Supreme Court candidates had paid visits shortly after their nominations with little controversy.
McConnell tried to pre-empt the spectacle by talking with Garland by phone Wednesday. He wished him well, his office said. Grassley, who also talked to Garland, congratulated him and agreed to meet with him -- just not immediately.
A growing group of senators took that approach, including Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona.
"I meet with anybody, and that would include him," Flake said.
Flake said that if a Democrat such as Hillary Clinton were elected president in November, he would want the Senate to consider Garland's nomination during a postelection, lame-duck session because "between him and somebody that a President Clinton might nominate, I think the choice is clear."
Flake's and other Republicans' willingness to sit down with Garland signaled a preliminary victory to some Democrats.
"The ice is cracking. It's going to crack further," Schumer told reporters Wednesday.
McConnell, Grassley and others stress that their objection to Garland's nomination isn't personal -- several Republican senators said Wednesday that they like Garland as a person, and seven of them voted to confirm him to the federal bench back in 1997.
"But this is different," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, one of the seven who "fought for [Garland]" in 1997. Hatch, a member of the Judiciary Committee that considers Supreme Court nominations, added that the current environment is too "toxic" and "politicized" to consider anybody.
Those Republicans also argue their opposition isn't political, since no one knows which party will next occupy the White House -- though some in the GOP also contend Obama lost his popular mandate to make a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court when the Senate went Republican in 2014.
"People spoke in the midterm election, and [Obama] came out on the short end of that," Grassley told reporters Wednesday. "In America, a democracy, you have to accept the judgment of the voters."
Garland, a centrist, appears to have a decent reputation among Senate Republicans, some of whom surmised that Obama made his pick expressly to try to force Republicans to abandon their demand to delay confirmation.
"I think he was really trying to pick somebody that he thought at least some Senate Republicans would accept right now," Hatch said.
Only two Republicans have broken ranks with the leadership and called for hearings and a vote under the normal confirmation process. One of them, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, reiterated her view Thursday in a statement calling for party leaders to follow "regular order."
"I hope, now that we have an actual nominee, that the Senate Judiciary Committee will follow the regular order and hold a hearing on the nomination of Judge Garland," Collins said in a statement. "For my part, since I am not a member of the Judiciary Committee, I will begin the process by agreeing to the White House request that I sit down with Judge Garland and have a meeting with him."
Information for this article was contributed by Kathleen Hennessey, Alan Fram and Mary Clare Jalonick of The Associated Press; by Karoun Demirjian of The Washington Post; and by David M. Herszenhorn of The New York Times.
A Section on 03/18/2016