Republicans tripped over themselves to take shots at Ketanji Brown Jackson. She knew what to do.
The playbook used in these Supreme Court confirmation hearings is the same one Republicans intend to use heading into the 2022 midterms and beyond.
It started with a GIF.
The Republican National Committee posted an image on social media Tuesday of Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson with her initials, "KBJ," crossed out and replaced with "CRT."
In the late morning, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who has twice voted to confirm Jackson for other federal judicial posts, inexplicably asked, "What faith are you, by the way?" It’s worth noting that such a question would be illegal for an employer to ask a candidate during a job interview.
Graham went as far as to ask, "On a scale of 1 to 10, how faithful would you say you are, in terms of religion?" I bet this line of questioning wouldn't have happened if Graham weren't a member of a political party that shamelessly panders to a predominantly white evangelical base. And let's not even try to reconcile how Graham can cling to faith on one hand, while on the other expressing his desire to see people in the Guantánamo Bay detention center all die.
From Lindsey Graham to Ted Cruz
Not to be outdone, Harvard's very own Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, would seize the racist mantle next, launching into a tirade about critical race theory, The 1619 Project and books available to elementary school students at a private school in Washington, D.C.
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Jackson could not have been more clear: "It is not something that I've studied. It doesn't come up in my work."
And yet something tells me had Jackson not been a woman of color, the topic would not have come up at all in this proceeding.
Then came the Jan. 6 merchant, I mean Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, who continued his QAnon-inspired crusade to further the debunked notion that Jackson is soft on despots who traffic in child pornography. What is it about Jackson that makes Republicans like Hawley think they can label her as soft on crime? It couldn’t possibly be that she's a Black woman, could it?
Never mind the fact that she comes from a law enforcement family and has the support of the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
It's exhausting to be a Black woman. Just ask Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson.
While Graham, Cruz and Hawley were jockeying to win the prize for racist/sexist questioner of the day, Sen. Tom Cotton was waiting in the wings. The senator from Arkansas would proceed to ask Jackson a series of condescending questions about crime statistics in America and whether she thought we need more police. Of course, a Supreme Court justice has absolutely nothing to do with policing levels or catching criminals.
Cotton’s frequent use of the phrase "it's a simple question" was also a rhetorical device employed to demean Jackson and create the impression that he was somehow superior to her. I wonder what could give Cotton, a white man, the idea that he could so casually belittle Jackson, a Black woman.
Interestingly, for all of their "concern" about crime in America, I don’t remember any of these Republicans feeling this kind of intensity toward the domestic terrorists who wanted to hang the vice president on Jan. 6, 2021.
Who voted to defund the police?
For all the talk about sexual predators, I don’t recall any of these senators expressing any concern about Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., serving on the House Judiciary Committee despite being accused of sex trafficking.
For all the grandstanding about rising crime and the need for more police on the streets, it was Republicans in Congress who voted to defund the police.
Republican senators are hypocrites. This is hardly a shock. But it's what lies beneath the hypocrisy that is so insidious: a toxic blend of racism and sexism.
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If Jackson demonstrated the same kind of "temperament" that Lindsey Graham displayed, Republicans would be pillorying her for being unhinged and emotionally compromised. If she became indignant every time Tom Cotton used the word "simple," Republicans would be using words like "nasty" to describe her. If she were a white man, Ted Cruz would not be reading elementary school books about critical race theory and asking her to address curriculum in private schools.
But this is the Republican Party.
Buckle up. There's more of this to come.
The playbook used during these confirmation hearings is the same playbook the GOP intends to use heading into the 2022 midterms and beyond. Anyone still clinging to the fiction that the cancer that has overrun the Republican Party would be contained to Donald Trump is flat-out delusional. And in the cases of Graham, Cruz, Hawley and Cotton, that cancer has mutated into something different, something darker, something dangerous.
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For Democrats, the Republican performance is a warning sign for what lies ahead. But in Ketanji Brown Jackson, we also have a playbook for how to beat them. KBJ’s deconstruction of every single one of their lies was an instruction manual for the rest of us. Be forceful, but calm. Be factual, but concise. Be restrained, but precise. They’ll double down on ugliness, on anger, on outrage.
But at the end of the day, these Republicans will be just a footnote as Judge Jackson makes history and leaves them in it.
Kurt Bardella is a member of Paste BN’s Board of Contributors. He is an adviser to both the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. He is a former senior adviser to Republicans on the House Oversight Committee. Follow him @KurtBardella