Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton said on Sunday that he would keep an “open mind” when it came to President Biden’s nominee to replace Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, adding, however, that he doubted the nominee would be someone whom the GOP could support.
“Fox News Sunday” host Dana Perino asked Cotton how he intended to approach Biden’s upcoming Supreme Court nomination, noting Vice President Harris’s intense line of questioning against Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing when she was a senator.
“Well first of all, as a member of the committee, I will try to ask questions that contain a bit more logic than Kamala Harris’s line of questioning right there. But I suspect we’ll all keep an open mind,” Cotton, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said.
“We will review the nominee on her merits. I can’t say that I’ve got wild expectations that Joe Biden is going to nominate someone who I think I can support or many Republicans can support because I’ve seen dozens of his nominees to the lower court,” Cotton added.
“I can say one thing that I won’t do, and I doubt any Republican will do, is engage in the kind of grotesque smear campaigns against the character of fine men like Clarence Thomas, or as we saw what happened with Brett Kavanaugh two years ago.”
Last week, Breyer announced that he would be retiring from the Supreme Court after the current term ends and a replacement has been confirmed. Biden has vowed to nominate the first Black woman to the court.
Shortly after Breyer announced his retirement, Cotton released a statement calling on Biden to nominate “a jurist committed to the Constitution and the rule of law” and spoke out against nominating what he referred to as “another unqualified, left-wing ideologue, as he has done so often with lower-court nominees.”
Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who refused to give former President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, a Senate hearing or vote, said last week that he would give Biden’s nominee “fair look.” However, he also warned Biden to not “outsource” his Supreme Court nominee to the “radical left.”