Racism And Hypocrisy: The Stuff Of The Right's Reactions To Court Vacancy
McConnell, others express racist sentiments against Biden's goal to name a Black woman
You will find — from Republicans and the political right — little of the kind words and lauding opinions common in Democrats’ reactions to Wednesday's news of Justice Stephen Breyer's pending retirement.
Rather, statements from the right have been filled with veiled threats, outright hypocrisy and a frankly racist lessening of the eminently qualified Black female jurists President Biden has pledged to select among to fill the seat Breyer soon will be leaving vacant.
Breyer, 83, announced that he would be stepping down from the nation's highest court at the end of the court’s current term. He has served on the court since nominated by President Bill Clinton in 1994.
Biden has announced that he intends to nominate the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court.
“I've made no decision except one…that person will be the first Black woman [ever] nominated to the Supreme Court,” the president said.
Reaction from the top Republican in the Senate was cool at best — and potentially code-worded to reject Biden's plan to nominate a Black woman.
“The President must not outsource this important decision to the radical left. The American people deserve a nominee with demonstrated reverence for the written text of our laws and our Constitution,” Sen Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) said.
Luke Zaleski, legal affairs editor at Conde Nast worked to decode McConnell's statement.
“‘Radical left’ means what exactly? Kinda seems like code for [people of color]? Radical right however means stonewalling a nomination from Obama. And it means obstructing justice and protecting a traitorous former president who attacked his own country,” he tweeted.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki pushed back hard against McConnell's remarks.
“If anyone is saying that they plan to characterize whoever he nominates after thorough consideration with both parties as radical before they know literally anything about who she is, they just obliterated their own credibility,” she said.
Despite Biden's commitment to naming a Black woman, right-wing constitutional scholar Ilya Shapiro insisted on pushing a non-Black man for the job, Sri Srinivasan, hief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Shapiro called Srinivasan “objectively” Biden's “best pick,” but lamented that in the end, the nation will have to settle for the “lesser black woman.”
Of Shapiro's analysis, journalist and syndicated columnist Connie Schultz tweeted, “We are seeing many such attempts to cast a Black woman as ‘lesser.’ Every time, we are seeing racism.”
Several eminently qualified Black female jurists have been floated as potential Biden picks, including: Ketanji Brown Jackson, 51, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit; Leondra Kruger, 45, a California Supreme Court justice; and J. Michelle Childs, 55, who has served on the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina for over a decade before Biden unexpectedly nominated her last month to serve on the high-profile D.C. Circuit.
Meanwhile, Republican Sen Susan Collins, of Maine, who likes to portray herself as a moderate, betrayed more than a bit of hypocrisy when she suggested that the confirmation process unfold slowly — after Collins herself was part of the Republican effort to muscle Amy Coney Barrett onto the high court in the fall of 2020 with lightning speed ahead of a presidential election which then-President Donald Trump was expected to lose.
“As you know, I felt that the timetable for the last nominee was too compressed. This time there is no need for any rush. We can take our time, have hearings, go through the process, which is a very important one it is a lifetime appointment after all,” she said.
Sen Pat Leahy (D-Vt), president pro-tempore of the Senate, called out Collins’ remarks.
“Mitch McConnell has declared these things have to be done very quickly, as we saw during the last nominee. I think it's going to be awfully difficult for the Republicans, after setting that precedent, to stretch things out,” he said.
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