The Republican Mask Slips Again...

...And a GOP politician accidentally tells the truth.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) indicated on Monday that Senate Republicans wouldn’t have accepted Ketanji Brown Jackson as a Supreme Court pick if they controlled the Senate and sent a warning shot about how Republicans will treat any Supreme Court nominees in 2023 or 2024.

“If we get back the Senate and we’re in charge of this body and there is judicial openings, we will talk to our colleagues on the other side. But if we were in charge, she would not have been before this committee. You would have had somebody more moderate than this,” Graham said during a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting.

Graham’s comments come as he’s set to vote “no” on Jackson’s Supreme Court nomination — the first time he’ll oppose a Supreme Court pick since joining the Senate.

Republicans previously refused to move Merrick Garland’s 2016 Supreme Court nomination, arguing that it was in line with how Supreme Court nominees had been treated in a presidential election year when the White House and the Senate were controlled by different parties. If Republicans had kept control of the Senate after the 2020 election, that would give them the ability to similarly have refused to take up whoever President Biden nominated to succeed Justice Stephen Breyer.

If Republicans had kept control of the Senate, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) was expected to be chairman of the committee, and he’s likely to become chairman if Republicans win back the Senate in the November midterm elections.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said that he would not let President Biden fill a Supreme Court seat in 2024.

 

There is nobody Biden could have nominated that would have been acceptable to Graham.

 

Expecting a Republican to vote for an extremely well-rounded and well-qualified person, especially a Black woman, is laughable. Everyone knows the GOP are racists, and that's why their voters vote for them. 

As I've been saying for years now, Donald Trump's open bigotry, racism, and antisemitism was not a dealbreaker for 72 million people six years ago, and it's certainly not a dealbreaker now for the people who remain in the party six years later.