Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-AZ) predicted recently that the “Senate will not hold a final vote on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor until early September,” The Hill reports.
The prediction is a shot across the bow to President Obama and Senate Democrats who hoped to confirm Sotomayor before the August recess, which is to begin the second week of that month.
The prospect that Sotomayor will not win confirmation to the court before September means that she may have to withstand three months of scrutiny by Senate Republicans and attacks from conservative activists before the upper chamber renders a final judgment.
Senate Republicans have said consistently that they expect to have as much time to examine Sotomayor as Democrats were given for former President Bush’s two Supreme Court nominees: Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito.
“My guess is that if you apply the same general standards as were applied to the Roberts and Alito nominations that probably it goes into the first part of September,” Kyl said during a recent interview on Fox News.
The process under former President Bush:
Ninety-two days elapsed between when Bush named Alito as his nominee and when Alito received a final vote on the Senate floor. Seventy-two days elapsed between the naming of Roberts and his floor vote.
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