Word: republicanisms
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Political junkies who weren't thrilled at the prospect of a relatively staid confirmation process for President Barack Obama's as yet unnamed Supreme Court nominee can rest easy. This week Senate Republicans named perennial bomb thrower Jeff Sessions, 62, of Alabama to be the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, promising to bring at least a few sparks to a confirmation process that - if Minnesota's Al Franken is seated - was bound to be relatively easy...
...Twenty-three years ago, the same committee he now leads on the Republican side rejected Sessions' nomination to the federal bench. President Ronald Reagan already had more than 200 conservative judges confirmed when he nominated Sessions, then the young U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama, to the U.S. District Court in Alabama. At his confirmation hearing, Democrats tracked down a Justice Department employee named J. Gerald Hebert who had worked with Sessions on civil rights cases. Hebert told the committee that Sessions had once complained to him that the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association...
...though Specter was on the committee in 1986 and voted against Sessions at the time. "My vote against candidate Sessions for the federal court was a mistake," Specter told reporters on Capitol Hill, "because I have since found that Senator Sessions is egalitarian." Echoed Senator Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican and another long-term member of the committee, "The reason it won't come up is because he has been a member of the committee for a long period of time, and he's showed a great deal of impartiality. And he doesn't hold any of those views." Even...
...meeting the nominee as early as next week. "The sooner that he sends one up, the more likely it will be that that person is confirmed by the Senate before August, which is what they [the Obama Administration] want," Utah Republican Orrin Hatch, who is also on the committee, said. The Senate has just over two months until the break, punctuated by weeks off for Independence and Memorial Days. Not a lot of time to fit in two rounds of personal visits, vetting, confirmation hearings and a floor vote - as is traditional with Supreme Court nominees...
...membership are Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, (her former running mate, McCain, is a member), former Speaker Newt Gingrich, GOP chairman Michael Steele and potential 2012 presidential candidates Governors Mark Sanford of South Carolina and Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota. Gingrich already leads his own such group, as does the Republican National Committee and former RNC chairman Ed Gillespie...