Marjorie Taylor Greene: Meet your twin/clone/sister in partisan stagecraft – Marsha Blackburn.
It’s true that MTG is lots louder. And certainly more spontaneous, almost always cringeworthy. But as the Southern saying goes, MGT “ain’t got nothing” on Blackburn’s arrogant posturing. (Yes, unlike Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, we did clean that up a little for a family newspaper.)
After two long days in the confirmation hearing of Supreme Court justice nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, Blackburn had this burning, catty question: “Can you provide a definition for the word ‘woman’?”
Some news reports described Jackson as appearing confused before she responded. We didn’t see confusion. We saw a very smart attorney and judge looking at a grandstanding politician trying to muddy the water with one of the newest GOP tropes: transgender phobia.
“Can I provide a definition?” Jackson echoed, the corner of her mouth lifting ever so slightly. “No, I can’t. Not in this context. I’m not a biologist.”
The U.S. Court of Appeals jurist would not play that game with Tennessee’s raw meat-chomping, wanna-be starlet of the Senate’s GOP caucus.
“Senator, in my work as a judge what I do is address disputes. If there’s a dispute about the definition, people make arguments and I look at the law,” the nominee said.
Blackburn sniffed. If she’d had some pearls she no doubt would have clutched at them. Then, checking frequently the paper on the table in front of her (understandably since she is, after all, the senator who confuses the Constitution with the Declaration of Independence), she recited:
“Well. The fact that you can’t give me a straight answer about something as fundamental as what a woman is underscores the dangers of the kind of progressive education that we are hearing about.”
Let that sink in. “Underscores the dangers of the kind of progressive education that we are hearing about.”
With GOP states across the country – Tennessee and Georgia included – passing bills banning trans girls from participating in K-12 girls’ sports and banning gender-affirming health care along with anything else for trans youth, there is little doubt that Jackson, if confirmed, will preside over cases involving trans rights.
But this line of questioning was just one more effort among the GOP’s most backward voices to use culture wars and wedge issues and paint a false portrait of Jackson in an all-too-obvious effort to pressure moderate Democratic senators like Joe Manchin to vote against her.
Blackburn – along with Sens. Graham, Ted Cruz of Texas, Josh Hawley of Missouri and Tom Cotton of Arkansas – waved the reddest flags in the innuendo and sensationalism show. One by one, they tried to make Jackson someone she is not: a person who does not respect America, is not really religious or religious enough, an attorney and jurist soft on child abusers and terrorists, a pusher of “woke” education, a believer in using critical race theory in criminal sentencing.
It was all hogwash. Even the very conservative National Review this week wrote that the accusations – particularly Hawley’s about Jackson’s record in child pornography cases – were “meritless to the point of demagoguery” and “a smear.”
But that is the game here, after all: To make this and any nominee of a Democratic president merely a “stand-in” for any and all so-called “liberal and left” views. Blackburn, et al., want to make Jackson a caricature of the most liberal Democrat they can possible conjure.
Never mind that in Judge Jackson’s opening statement and other comments during the hearings, she has made it clear she is a patriotic American who was born in this “great nation,” a judge with a mainstream record, the proud sister and niece of a brother and two uncles who’ve worked as police officers, the grateful and respectful daughter of teachers – including one who later himself became an attorney.
So go ahead, Sen. Blackburn. Clutch at your imaginary pearls to imply fear and disdain. Cast aspersions. Plant false flags. And say hello to Marjorie Taylor Greene. Maybe she’ll invite you to her next Nazi-leaning rally.