The top two leading candidates to replace outgoing Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the upper chamber would not be a rubber stamp for just any Supreme Court nominee put forth by a would-be President Kamala Harris, CNN reported Sunday.
Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Republican Whip John Thune, R-S.D., both said they would take a “wait-and-see” approach to whom a Harris candidate might be.
“We’ll cross the bridge when we come to it,” Thune told CNN, with Cornyn saying, “It depends.”
Thune, Cornyn and Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., are the three senators who have put their name in the hat to replace Minority Leader McConnell, who announced he is stepping down as Republican leader but staying on as senator to complete his term. The new leader will be picked by senators during the lame duck period after the Nov. 5 election.
It is highly expected that whomever is chosen to succeed McConnell will be the majority leader in the next Congress. Democrats own a 51-49 majority but are defending multiple vulnerable seats, with West Virginia all but in the win column with the retirement of Sen. Joe Manchin, I-W.Va.
A Republican majority in the Senate could spell trouble for a would-be President Harris to get a candidate confirmed.
“If I’m in a position to make the decision, I’m not going to schedule a vote on some wild-eyed radical nominee, which I know she would love to nominate. But that would be my intention,” Cornyn told CNN.
Thune, the chamber's No. 2 Republican, said, “It probably depends on who it is and that’s the advantage of having a Republican Senate.”
McConnell famously rebuffed then-President Barack Obama’s efforts to fill the seat of the late Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016, leaving it vacant until after the election, won by former President Donald Trump.
McConnell’s lieutenants were watching.
“We would be the loyal opposition,” Cornyn told CNN.