Hawley Crawls into the Gutter

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

The US Senate Judiciary Committee will begin the confirmation process today for President Biden's first nominee to the US Supreme Court,  Ketanji Brown Jackson who currently a federal judge on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.  Judge Brown Jackson, a graduate of Harvard University and Harvard Law School, is a former judge on the US District Court for the District of Columbia, a former Vice-Chair of the US Sentencing Commission, and a former federal public defender who worked at defending those without the means.  (Judge Brown Jackson would be the first former federal public defender to ever serve on the US Supreme Court.

The American Bar Association has given Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson its highest approval rating for a seat of the Supreme Court, and a recent poll by Axios reveals that over half of the American public (55%) support her appointment to the nation's highest court.

The Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, has gone on the record stating that the confirmation process of Judge Jackson Brown will be "thoroughly respectable."  Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the group that will interrogate Judge Brown Jackson beginning today, also said that Republicans would not be "getting in the gutter" with regard to this nomination.

But Josh Hawley, a Virginia resident who claims to represent Missouri in the US Senate, has his own agenda and will not be constrained by the dictates of tired old men like McConnell and Grassley.  Josh "fist-in-the-air" Hawley is a shameless self-promoter with presidential aspirations.  He is also a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee who is not about to squander all of the free airtime that will come with Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's confirmation hearings.

Over this past weekend, in advance of the judiciary committee hearing, Hawley crawled into the political gutter with an attack on Judge Brown Jackson that accused her of going easy on sex offenders who preyed on children.  Hawley's bizarre attack was quickly fact-checked and dismissed as spurious by credible sources like the Associated Press, CNN, and The Washington Post.  Andrew McCarthy, writing for the conservative publication, National Review, rejected Hawley's allegation calling it "meritless to the point of demagoguery."  

But Josh Hawley, guttersnipe, was not speaking to people who read National Review or The Washington Post.  Josh was directing his remarks to Republican voters in places like Iowa and New Hampshire,  many of whom regard Donald Trump as a statesman and a stable genius - and tend to view America through a racial filter.  Those are the people to whom Josh Hawley speaks.

Other right-wing zealots with presidential aspirations - Ted Cruz,  Tom Cotton, and Marsha Blackburn -   also serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee.   Hawley may have been the first to crawl into the gutter, but it is safe to assume that he won't be the last.