The White House is criticizing Idaho Sen. Jim Risch, after he said yesterday that he won’t meet with President Obama’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, Merrick Garland, until after a Senate committee votes on the nomination, and said he wants a conservative nominee more like the late Justice Antonin Scalia. He told McClatchy Newspapers he opposes Garland for not supporting gun rights, among other things. “If I meet with him, I’m spinning my wheels and he’s spinning his wheels,” Risch told McClatchy.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said of Risch, “the people of Idaho . . . expected him to do his job.”

Earnest noted this comment from Risch yesterday in the McClatchy story: “The U.S. Supreme Court is very, very political, just like Congress is, just like the president of the United States. People wring their hands and say, ‘Oh, that’s terrible, you shouldn’t bring politics into it.’ How do you not bring politics into it?”

Earnest told McClatchy, “Just yesterday, we saw Idaho Senator Jim Risch come out and say that the Supreme Court is very, very political, just like Congress. Well, the truth is our founding fathers intended a justice system that insulated the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary from day-to-day politics. That’s part of why they envisioned lifetime appointments for judges, so that they wouldn’t have to run for re-election and they wouldn’t face political pressure so intensely, that would allow them to focus on their job of interpreting the law.”

Earnest said voters expect a senator who “is collecting a six-figure annual paycheck” to “do their job,” and said that by not considering and holding hearings on Obama’s nominee, “Right now, Senator Risch and his colleagues in the Senate Republican Conference aren’t.”

You can read the full story here from reporters Lesley Clark and Rob Hotakainen in the McClatchy Washington Bureau; McClatchy Newspapers is the parent company of the Idaho Statesman.

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