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Chuck Schumer opens can of whoop-ass on Ted Cruz for threatening to block Obama court appointment

New York Senator Chuck Schumer on This Week -- (ABC Screen grab)
Tom Boggioni
February 14, 2016

On Sunday morning, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer was blunt and to the point when it came to calls from Republicans to obstruct any appointment President Barack Obama makes to the Supreme Court to replace Justice Antonin Scalia.

Appearing on ABC's This Week, the future face of the Democrats in the Senate began by laying into Texas Senator and GOP presidential contender Ted Cruz for his comments on Twitter immediately following the announcement of Scalia's death on Saturday.

Cruz tweeted, "We owe it to him, & the Nation, for the Senate to ensure that the next President names his replacement."

Sunday morning, Cruz went a step further saying he would "absolutely" filibuster any nominee the president submitted for Senate confirmation.

Schumer vociferously disagreed.

"Well, the job, first and foremost, is for the president to nominate and for the Senate to hold hearings and go through the process," Schumer explained, before turning his guns on Cruz. "You know, the Constitution, Ted Cruz holds the Constitution when he walks through the halls of Congress. Let him show me the clause that says president's only president for three years."

According to Schumer, the president will nominate a "mainstream" candidate, and he suggested that GOP senators will not want to follow Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell "over the cliff."

"You know, the kind of obstructionism that Mitch McConnell's talking about, he's harking back to his old days, you know, he recently he said, well, 'I want regular order,'" Schumer stated. "But in 2010, right after the election or right during the election, he said, 'My number one job is to defeat Barack Obama,' without even knowing what Barack Obama was going to propose. Here, he doesn’t even know who the president's going to propose and he said, 'no, we're not having hearings, we're not going to go forward to lead the Supreme Court vacant at 300 days in a divided time.'"

"This kind of obstructionism isn't going to last. And you know, we Democrats didn't do this. We voted 97-0 for Justice Kennedy in the last year of Reagan's term. I think first the American people don't like this obstruction. When you go right off the bat and say, 'I don't care who he nominates, I am going to oppose him,' that's not going to fly." the New York senator concluded.

Watch the clip of Schumer going after Cruz, posted to Twitter by ABC below:

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