Businessman and former ambassador Earle Mack is urging Senate Republicans to put aside the contentious presidential race and confirm "centrist" Merrick Garland to fill the Supreme Court seat left vacant by Justice Antonin Scalia.
In a
full-page ad in The New York Times, the onetime George W. Bush-appointed ambassador to Finland, real estate investor and chairman emeritus of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law decries GOP "hardliners" who've been "blinded by politics" and "lost their common sense."
"Don't let your legacy, the future of the Republican Party, and our country suffer," he writes.
Mack lauds Garland for being "fair in his rulings" and for having "shown none of the ultra-liberal judicial activism that would endanger the Supreme Court balance."
"By continuing to use the Garland nomination as a political tool, Republicans in the Senate are not only risking their credibility, but rising the loss of the Senate, the ability to confirm or reject future presidential nominations, and possibly decades of an activist bench," Mack writes.
Instead, he argues its "far better to confirm a known variable than risk everything on the hopes that a long-shot Republican victory in November — despite polls — will offer a better nominee."
In particular, Mack argues "vulnerable Republican" senators in six states — Florida, Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania — are fighting to retain their seats in November, and blocking the Garland nomination would give "Democrats an issue to use against" them.
"Let this serve as a wakeup call to Senator [Mitch] McConnell and GOP leaders to take a bold leadership stand and confirm Judge Garland immediately," he writes, "thus averting a devastating decision that could cost the Republican Party not only the Senate, but their own credibility and good standing.'
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