Republicans routinely refer to Democrats as hypocrites to distract from the toxic hypocrisy that defines the current Administration and Republicans in Congress. In 2016, Lindsey Graham said if an opening on the Supreme Court opened in the last year of Donald Trump’s presidency, the nomination should wait until the next president is elected. In March of 2016, after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, President Barack Obama nominated Judge Merritt Garland to fill the vacant seat on the court. Senator Mitch McConnell refused to hold confirmation hearings for Garland and was quoted in a 2018 NPR story as saying “any appointment by a sitting president in the last year of his term was null and void.” He said the next court justice should be chosen by the next president when the Democrats were in power, but with Republicans in power, his narrative has hypocritically changed. The Trump Republican party has lost its moral compass, it’s a sense of fairness, and any pursuit of bipartisanship. They govern as if America is or should be a white, Christian-dominated country, which it isn’t and was never meant to be.
Amy Coney Barrett was appointed by Trump to serve on the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in 2017. Her additional experience includes clerking for Justice Scalia from 1997-1998, working in private practice for DC and Texas law firms, and teaching law at George Washington University and Notre Dame Law School. She is a practicing Catholic and was chosen by Trump for her staunch conservative views.
With the probable confirmation of Barrett to the highest court, America will undoubtedly become less law-abiding. There is no possibility the diverse American population will live by laws that reflect white privilege, racial discrimination, predominant Christian teachings, or gender inequality. By stacking the court with ultra-conservative Christian judges, Trump hopes to keep alive the hoax of him being a deeply religious, pro-life, pro-democracy man. This false image he has sold to a fringe minority of Americans has been deconstructed by factual evidence that he has broken laws prior to and since becoming president. Additionally, his adultery, disrespect towards women, defiance of the rule of law, mismanagement of the pandemic, legal problems related to tax evasion, and indictments of charity and financial fraud has inspired a movement to save our daily democracy from becoming a mirror image of Russia’s sham democracy.
Despite Barack Obama’s widespread popularity as president, the election of Donald Trump was a backlash to America having elected it’s first black president as well as it’s resistance to electing a woman president. For a person with a documented history of racism, misogyny, financial failures and improprities, dishonesty, and business and personal relationships with criminals to be elected to the U.S. presidency is tragic for our democracy. America no longer has the trust of it’ s allies and is no longer the beacon of moral integrity is was prior to the Trump presidency.
Trump’s choice of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court represents Trump’s desperate strategy to hang on to the religious- right voting block and salvage an ideology for his political gain which is as out of step with the majority of Americans as is his Elvis comb-over. Americans are right to be concerned about a Supreme Court that is dominated by an ideology that reflects the few, not the many.
During the confirmation hearings this week, Barrett was told by several Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee that Trump is rushing her appointment to the court before the election to signal to conservatives she will be the judge who secures the demise of Roe v Wade and Obamacare. Her reaction was to assure the committee her judgment on these issues is not pre-determined by her personal beliefs or any other narrative being circulated about her. She is quoted as publicly stating, “My church affiliation or my religious beliefs would not bear on the discharge of my duties as a judge. It is never appropriate for a judge to impose their convictions on the law.”
Senator Diane Feinstein’s comment to Barrett was “the dogma lives loud in you, and that’s a concern.” Women, the LGBTQ community, non- Christians, blacks and Latinos, American Indians, and immigrants from all nations will rebel against and defy any antiquated, prejudiced rulings that come out of this stacked court. Mitch ” Moscow” McConnell and Donald Trump have sacrificed the integrity and stability of the Supreme Court for a short- term, partisan power play. In blatant hypocrisy, Republicans are crying out in defiance of the possibility that Joe Biden would move to add to the number of justices on the Supreme Court in revenge over Barrett’s appointment. Because the standard for ethical behavior, obeying the law, and morality has gotten so degraded by Trump, Republicans will have to shut their powerless mouths no matter what type of action any future president takes.
