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Romney, who has clashed fiercely with Trump, was seen as a possible Republican roadblock.
Republicans have obtained the numbers needed to ensure that President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee faces a confirmation vote in the Senate.
Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah has given the party the 51 sponsors needed to move forward with voting for Trump’s candidate to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died Friday.
Democrats argued that there should be no confirmation in an election year.
The measure guarantees a bitter political battle before the November vote.
President Trump says he will announce his chosen candidate on Saturday.
Justices of the Supreme Court are nominated for office by the President of the United States, but must be approved by the Senate.
With the death of Justice Ginsburg, a stalwart liberal, Trump has had the opportunity to cement an ideological tilt to the right of the nine-member court by replacing it with a conservative.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised to hold a confirmation vote before the November election, but a question mark remained throughout the week as to whether enough Republicans in the House would back him.
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Attendees at Trump’s Ohio rally urged Trump to “take that seat”
Although they have a slim majority with 53 seats, two Republican center senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, said they were skeptical of confirming a judicial appointment for life in an election year.
Romney, a Trump critic whom Trump called “our worst senator” earlier this month, was seen as a possible defector.
However, in a statement released Tuesday, Romney said he would give a hearing to Trump’s nominee, citing “historic precedent.”
“My decision regarding a Supreme Court nomination is not the result of a subjective test of ‘fairness’ which, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder,” he said.
“It is based on the immutable impartiality of following the law, which in this case is the Constitution and the precedent. The historical precedent for nominations in the election year is that the Senate generally does not confirm the candidate of an opposing party, but it does confirm to a candidate of his own.
Republicans line up
It didn’t take long for the Republican senators to line up.
Ultimately, concerns about hypocrisy – just four years ago the Republican majority blocked Barack Obama’s nomination to the Supreme Court because it was made in “an election year” – took a back seat to simple power politics. Republicans have a chance to cement a solid conservative majority in the high court and will not let it slip away, even if there are political consequences for Republican senators seeking re-election in moderate states.
Democrats will howl in anger, but at this point there is not much they can do, procedurally, to stop what seems inevitable. Instead, they will issue warnings of dire consequences when they take power next year. They have threatened to add Supreme Court seats, admit new Democratic-leaning states (namely Washington DC and Puerto Rico), or strengthen the power of the Senate majority. However, those are all hypothetical battles for another day.
For the moment, Republicans enjoy the prospect of the biggest change in the ideological makeup of the court in three decades, with issues like abortion, the right to vote, health care, gun control and civil liberties at stake.
