By a 53-47 vote, the U.S. Senate confirmed Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court and there's not a damn thing Republicans can do about it.
Though they tried to the bitter end with Rand Paul delaying the vote and not being able to bring himself to step inside the Senate chamber to vote. After she was confirmed, nearly all Republican Senators walked out of the chambers led by Ted Cruz as Democratic Senators and Mitt Romney saw fit to applaud her. More on Romney later.
Even before President Biden had even nominated KBJ, Cruz made it loud and clear he found it "offensive" that Biden would keep his campaign promise to appoint a black woman to the highest court in the land. Longtime Cato Institute apparatchik Ilya Shapiro was horrified that Biden would appoint "a lesser black woman" to the bench while Mississippi GOP Senator Roger Wicker claimed the pick would be nothing more than "a beneficiary" of affirmative action. Not to be outdone Louisiana Senator John Kennedy said a black woman wouldn't know "a law book from a J. Crew catalogue."
Like I said, this was before Biden actually nominated anyone.
Once Jackson was appointed, Tennessee GOP Senator Marsha Blackburn demanded KBJ define what a woman is, Cruz did his usual grandstanding this time with children's books, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley increased his street cred with the QAnon crowd by claiming KBJ was soft on child porn and pedophilia. Oh yeah, Oklahoma Senator Tom Cotton claimed that Jackson would have probably defended the Nazis at Nuremberg.
Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse did decry the "performative jackassery" among his Republican colleagues, but then decided to vote with the performative jackasses. Meanwhile, Lindsey Graham decided he was against KBJ after being for KBJ.
Through it all KBJ didn't take the bait. Not once. She came across as both dignified and eminently qualified.
Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski voted for her as they did when she was confirmed to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and would be joined by Mitt Romney who did the reverse of Graham and supported KBJ after previously opposing her. Romney praised KBJ as a “well-qualified jurist” and a “person of honor” who is in "within the mainstream." These are just about the only three Republicans who showed even a modicum of decency and dignity during this whole ordeal.
This isn't to say that I won't disagree with KBJ's decisions or reasoning behind them. Nothing she has ever said or done warranted the sort of treatment she received at the hands of most Republicans. But in the end Republicans ended up doing more damage to themselves than they ever did or ever will to Ketanji Brown Jackson, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
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