The absurd chorus of Republican rationalization for opposing Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson hit a crescendo over the weekend with this comment from Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt: “I won’t be supporting her, but I’ll be joining others in understanding the importance of this moment.” Huh? Other GOP senators have waxed on about Jackson’s sterling qualifications, while announcing that they, too, will vote no for various contrived reasons.
Why not just say the obvious? The entire process of seating justices has become so poisoned that party-line votes, once the exception, are now the rule. Democrats did it, too, during the three nomination fights under former President Donald Trump.
Conservatives can justifiably point out that, in 1987, Democrats blocked qualified nominee Robert Bork for purely ideological reasons. But the Bork fight was an aberration in a period when most nominees of either party won easy confirmation. The 1991 fight over Clarence Thomas was spurred by sexual misconduct allegations, not his conservatism. Throughout that era, conservative justices like Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, and Chief Justice John Roberts won either unanimous or overwhelming bipartisan support from the Senate.
