This piece is running as an op/ed in newspapers in the very red congressional district in which I was the Democratic nominee for Congress in 2012.
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Much has been said about the conduct of four of the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee during the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson. But something important remains to be said.
As for what those Republican Senators did, suffice to say that it was disgraceful as well as profoundly dishonest, as should have been obvious to any well-informed citizen who watched.
Even after fact-checkers had shown the utter falsehood of accusations coming from Senators Cotton and Hawley, they continued their bogus smears of Jackson as uncaring about protecting children from pedophiles.
Likewise with Senator Cruz’s clumsy playing of a bogus race card, and with the bad faith of Lindsey Graham’s questioning.
These four Republican Senators abused her with what they knew were falsehoods and distortions.
(We can assume they knew their attacks were fraudulent because it’s not credible that they could succeed in getting degrees from Harvard or Yale Law School without being able to tell a bogus argument and a deliberate distortion of facts when they see it.)
It was truly a shameful performance.
(And a sign of the degradation of our politics when one compares it with the near-unanimous vote to confirm Ruth Bader Ginsburg thirty years before.)
Biden had picked the most unassailable possible black woman nominee, impressive on every level, held in the highest regard by everyone she’d dealt with in the legal world, including respected Republican judges.
Yet these Republican Senators demeaned and disrespected her.
The commentary has rightly focused on how profoundly offensive it was for them to turn that woman’s confirmation hearing into that ugly circus. But I haven’t heard anyone note what these Senators’ ugly antics reveal:
Those Senators held up a mirror to the Republican base.
Here’s the logic that reveals that mirror:
- These guys are smart.
- It is generally understood that these Senators -- possibly excepting Lindsey Graham – have presidential ambitions, that they are trying to position themselves to be the Republican nominee in 2024 (if it is not Trump).
- As smart, professional politicians, they’re likely experts on the question of how to win the support of Republican voters.
- For a politician with presidential ambitions, the nationally-televised hearings for Judge Jackson’s confirmation offered an exceptional opportunity to make a positive impression on the Republican base.
- Therefore, we can infer from how these highly intelligent and ambitious politicians used that opportunity how they see today’s Republican base, and what kind of conduct they think that base will reward.
The image of the Republican base shown in the mirror those Senators held up is profoundly disturbing: they judge that the voters who will determine the Republican nominee for President will reward a politician who attacks a black woman -- even one beyond reproach -- with bogus arguments and false accusations.
I wish we could dismiss their appraisal as misguided. But this is what these smart politicians are best at: understanding what will win the allegiance of voters.
Besides that, their appraisal is corroborated by so much of the evidence we’ve seen in recent times. Over the past seven years, this Republican base has been enthusiastic supporters of a leader who was amazingly indifferent to what was true, or fair, or good for the nation, or in accordance with traditional norms of political conduct.
So why should these Senators not imagine that the voters whose support they want would reward their slandering this upstanding jurist with the blatant falsehood that she was “soft on pedophiles”?
For years, these “conservative” voters have shown that they thrive on an “Us-against-Them” approach to politics—eager to support politicians that attack anyone – no matter how unfairly – on the other side of culture-war issues, or matters involving race, regardless of how many of our constitutional norms get trampled.
So why wouldn’t almost the entire Republican senatorial caucus – even those not grandstanding with their attacks -- vote against a nominee as worthy as Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the near-unanimous vote RBG received three decades ago from a Republican Party that still believed in the sanctity of America’s traditional norms, and in basic human decency?
For years since then, the propagandists of the force that has taken over the Republican Party has stoked such rage in the Republican base, and focused those voters’ attention so completely on what divides Americans, that it has become apparent that they don’t care about whether their leaders “play by the rules,” so long as they are true to the one guiding principle, “Whatever helps Our Side gain power.”
As Ginni Thomas (wife of a Republican-appointed Justice on the Supreme Court) wrote, in a text to the Republican President’s chief of staff, in support of the attempt to overthrow the 2020 Election, “the most important thing you can realize right now is that there are no rules in war.”
That, of course, is completely contrary to what America’s founders believed. They believed that “playing by the rules” is the most important thing. (That’s why the defense of the Constitution is the one and only thing they require of everyone who will exercise any of the power of the state.)
Unless our political actors play within the rules, power in the nation will be decided by war. And that, in turn, means it will ended up being wielded by people whose pursuit of power is unrestrained by scruples. Which means the nation would be ruled, as with so much that’s been ugly in human history, by the Spirit of the Gangster.