Biden: 'There is no Biden rule' on Supreme Court nominations

WASHINGTON -- Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday tried to clear his name and tout his record on Supreme Court nominations, calling Republican branding of his past remarks on the subject "ridiculous" and casting himself as a longtime advocate of bipartisan compromise in filling seats on the high court.

In a speech at Georgetown Law School, Biden issued a broad warning Republicans' election-year blockade of President Barack Obama's nominee "can lead to a genuine Constitutional crisis" and sought to distance himself from the strategy. He argued Republicans have distorted a 1992 speech in which he seemed to endorse the notion of blocking any Supreme Court nominee put forward in the throes of the election season.

Republicans have labeled their strategy the "Biden rule." They are using the 1992 Biden speech in an attempt to cast their no-hearing, no-vote campaign as part of a Senate tradition -- their defense to Democrats' charges they're shirking their Constitutional duty.

But there is division within the ranks on that front. Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., made the case earlier this week that Judge Merrick Garland should get a vote.

Biden, a former Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, said his broader point in the lengthy Senate floor speech was to call for more consultation with the Senate in choosing a nominee, a practice he said would lead to nominees with less extreme views. Obama "followed the path of moderation" in picking appeals court judge Garland, Biden said Thursday.

"There is no Biden rule. It doesn't exist," Biden told professors and students. "There is only one rule I ever followed in the Judiciary Committee. That was the Constitution's clear rule of advice and consent."

Biden's defense focuses on a later section of the speech, in which he called on then-President George H.W. Bush and future presidents to work more closely with the Senate to name moderate nominees. Earlier in the speech, Biden warned if Bush were to name a nominee immediately, weeks before the summer political conventions, "the Senate Judiciary Committee should seriously consider not scheduling confirmation hearings on the nomination until after the political campaign season is over."

The remarks have proven problematic for Biden, a veteran of decades of Supreme Court battles. After more than 15 years on the Judiciary Committee, eight as chairman, few in Washington can match Biden's experience with judicial nominations. Facing perhaps the last big political fight of his career, the vice president has appeared eager to dive into a familiar debate.

Biden, who has acted as a stealthy liaison to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in past negotiations, has begun some of that work. He has reached out to some Republican senators, and he has pressed the issue while campaigning for Democrats in Seattle and Ohio.