Republican Senators Wink at the Comments Section
In the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, two of the more ambitious Republican Senators are again making a strong case for why cameras should not be allowed into Congressional proceedings.
One could plausibly make the case that on average the court nominees from a democratic President are going to be more lenient on sentencing in criminal cases. This is even more true of a former public defender.
That is not to imply that being a public defender is not in itself a noble calling. But, it implies a sympathy with criminal defendents that, while not innappropriate, would lend itself to acting on the more lenient end of the sentencing guidelines.
That kind of nuance is unacceptable in a modern political campaign. In fact, in the Trumpified GOP, any deference to the judgement of the “other side” is a politically fatal weakness.
And so we have the spectacle of an ambitious junior Senator from Missouri absurdly implying that Judge Jackson is somehow sympathetic to child pornographers because, in certain cases, she was fairly lenient with sentencing. Even though in all cases the convicted defendant went to prison.
Acknowledging that we can’t allow the shamelessness of this display to mask the cynicism. Senators Josh Hawley and Senator Ted Cruz have decided that their ambition to become the Republican nominee for president supersedes any scruples.
A good portion of Republican voters, and certainly the most vocal, are people who believe in or are sympathetic to the QAnon movement. As a review, QAnon is an online political movement originating in the dark corners of online message boards and comment sections. Its main premise is that a cabal of “Satan-worshipping” pedophiles secretly run the country for their benefit. It would be natural then that anyone supposedly part of this cabal would be sympathetic to the sort of deviant criminal that Judge Jackson is supposedly lenient on.
Naturally, the collection of voters sympathetic to these notions would also be sympathetic to two senators voicing “concerns” similar to the concerns they have.
Of course, the type of man willing to engage in this discourse is going to appear too slimy for the median Republican voter to stomach. With Trump it was different. He made similar accusations with the same instinct that a dog runs after a stick, honestly and purely in a way that seems endearing in a certain light.
Senators Cruz and Hawley do not inspire the same positive feelings. Their fate is to be more like dogs chasing their tails, only to fall into the ditch of polling in single digits in Iowa.
Following the confirmation vote, these Senators will experience yet another karmic twist of fate. The judge they dragged through the muck for their doomed ambition will from then be known as Associate Justice Jackson.