Showing his true colors.
Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., on Friday said his GOP colleagues should “man up and cast a vote” on Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, further breaking from his GOP Senate leadership as the first Senate Republican to call for an up-or-down roll call.
Kirk’s position is not surprising since he already has said, in an op-ed published in the Chicago Sun-Times on Feb. 22, that President Barack Obama has a right to send a nominee to the Senate and that person should get a hearing.
n a Thursday column, I wrote that if there ever is a vote, Kirk would be a yes for Garland, born in Chicago and raised in north suburban Lincolnwood. Kirk will not be able to say no to an Illinois native, considering that the uproar over a Supreme Court nominee to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia is coming as Kirk faces a big re-election battle against Rep. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill.
“We should go through the process the Constitution has already laid out. The president has already laid out a nominee who is from Chicagoland and for me, I’m open to see him, to talk to him, and ask him his views on the Constitution,” Kirk during an interview on WLS-AM’s Big John Howell Show.
In on interview on WLS radio, Kirk said: “Just man up and cast a vote. The tough thing about these senatorial jobs is you get ‘yes’ or ‘no’ votes. Your whole job is to either say ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ and explain why.”