The nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court following the retirement of Stephen Breyer from the high court should have been graciously welcomed by national Republican Party leadership and individual Senators.
If a nominee is qualified, that individual and the president deserve a prompt confirmation vote based solely on qualifications, not ideology. That has been and will continue to be my standard for all presidents and all nominations to executive and judicial appointments.
Instead, we have yet another circus of faux hearings that demonstrate a clear lack of respect for presidential privilege, an experienced jurist, and our legal system.
The Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee made fools of themselves this week. What a disgusting, disingenuous group of Donald Trump sycophants they once again proved to be.
By respecting the party in power, even in disagreement, we encourage fairness for future nominees.
Republicans are still nursing grudges that date back to Robert Bork’s 1987 nomination. They continue to believe Clarence Thomas was also the victim of a coordinated character assault. The worst racists within the Republican Party still complain that Richard Nixon’s nominees were treated unfairly. (However, even most Republican leaders opposed Nixon’s pro-segregation nominees for federal benches.)
I keep hoping that Republican leaders will try to reform the party and save it from its last half-century of Dixiecrat absorption. For those of us who are not progressive, not of the American left, we find ourselves watching these hearings with a sense that all might be lost within the GOP.
If you want to convince voters that the economic policies of the party are not rooted in racism, you cannot have racists leading the party. Increasingly, it’s clear racists, xenophobes, sexists, and other misfits are in charge… placed in seats of power by voters.
Observing Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, I cannot deny the party’s soul is nearly extinguished.
Brown Jackson’s nomination offered an opportunity for Republicans to at least try to appear more inclusive. Instead, the party looks even worse after these hearings.
Ranking Republican Chuck Grassley promised the Republicans would show deference to the nominee. Unfortunately, members including Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, John Kennedy, and Marsha Blackburn are busy playing for social media and Trump-aligned pundits, instead of acting like decent leaders of the “Party of Lincoln.”
Cruz, up for reelection in Texas, clearly wants to position himself with the party base. Hawley and Kennedy are, like Cruz, Ivy League elites playing dumb for the cameras. I have no idea what’s up with Marsha Blackburn, but I have to wonder if she’s aiming for the national spotlight, too. Notice the states from which these Senators were elected: Texas, Missouri, Louisiana, and Tennessee. The antics of these “leaders” do little for the images of their home states.
There’s really nothing to be written about Lindsey Graham. He’s everything that’s wrong with South Carolina’s Republican leadership.
The other Republicans managed to be less horrifying during the hearings, but the bar was set pretty low by their colleagues. It’s not as if they stood up for reason and sanity during the hearings. They were just less obnoxious and slightly more subtle in their ludicrous critiques of Brown Jackson.
I wish we could remove cameras from both chambers of Congress and nearly all hearings. Cameras encourage toxic behaviors, campaign rally speeches, and hyper-partisanship.
As I wrote in September of 2020, Supreme Court nominations were once largely perfunctory:
Ginsburg was confirmed to the court August 3, 1993 by a vote of 96-3. She had been nominated on June 22. Today, that relatively quick process seems like fiction. Less than a year later, Stephen G. Breyer was confirmed 87-9 on July 29, 1994. It might seem like ancient history, but Justice Ginsburg’s close friend, Antonin Scalia, had been confirmed 98–0 on September 17, 1986.
The confirmation hearings of Brett Kavanaugh were disgraceful, I wrote in October of 2018. Neither party looked great after those hearings, though partisans surely hardened in their positions on Kavanaugh.
Again, I have consistently argued that presidential prerogative should apply to most nominations, including court nominations. Merrick Garland should be on the court, if Republicans truly respected the privilege of presidents to have qualified nominees approved for executive and judicial appointments.
