ELKO, Nev. (AP) – Hillary Clinton predicted Monday that President Barack Obama will nominate someone who’s already been confirmed by the Senate to replace the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
The Democratic candidate for president said that would potentially increase pressure on resistant Republicans to consider Obama’s choice for the high court.
“I’m hoping that we will get somebody nominated that will get people saying, ‘Hey, the only reason you’re blocking this is pure partisanship, so do your duty,'” Clinton said in response to a question at a campaign stop in the remote northeastern Nevada mining town of Elko.
She added that some judges now serving on the federal appeals courts “were confirmed 99-0” by the Senate.
In the wake of Scalia’s death on Saturday, Republican senators and several GOP presidential candidates have said Obama should not seek to replace the revered conservative jurist during the final 11 months of his term in office. Instead, they argue, that choice should be left to the winner of this fall’s presidential election.