If you didn't know any better, senators said, you'd have thought it was an NFL arena. When Republicans walked in the committee room to vote on Amy Coney Barrett's nomination, the Democrats weren't there. Instead, their colleagues had been replaced by cardboard photos -- poster-sized pictures of random Americans with fixed smiles, looking on like a row of fake fans lining a stadium stand. Only this wasn't a stadium. It was the Senate Judiciary Committee. But thanks to liberals, games were still being played.
It was "surreal," Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) told reporters later. And it wasn't just that Democrats boycotted the vote, he said. It was that they chose to "continue this theater" that Barrett's confirmation would somehow be the death knell of American health care. "Judge Barrett deserves a vote and she will receive a vote," Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said in a statement Wednesday. "Judge Barrett deserves to be reported out of committee, and she will be reported out of committee. Judge Barrett deserves to be on the Supreme Court, and she will be confirmed."
By the end of the hour, Graham was right. She was reported out of committee at record speed -- on a unanimous 12-0 vote, no less. Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah), like a lot of Republicans, think the only ones the Democrats harmed with that stunt were themselves. "It is a shame that our colleagues on the other side, having failed to lay a glove on Judge Barrett, have walked out on this process and in so doing, walk out on the American people," he shook his head. They didn't even have the nerve to come and vote against her in person.
Maybe they didn't want to be on the record in the face of Barrett's skyrocketing popularity. Since her nomination, even the liberal-leaning polls have pointed to a meteoric rise in approval -- as much as 20 points in the last three weeks. Making matters even more complicated for the Left, the mom of seven seems to be gaining ground with Democrats. Thirty-two percent of Democratic voters now say they support Barrett's confirmation -- a spike of 18 percent since pollsters started asking. Through four grueling days, they saw what Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) did: "a sharp, qualified, legal superstar."
Only the radical Left, Marsha pointed out on "Washington Watch," dislikes her. Why? Because, after clerking in Washington D.C. for the late Justice Scalia, Senator Blackburn explained, "[She] didn't let them verbally beat [her] into submission to a leftist agenda." She went back to Notre Dame, became a "wife, a mom, a professor." Frankly, Senator Blackburn said, they wanted a "Stepford wife of liberalism" who agrees with them on everything -- who doesn't challenge them or thinks independently. But ironically, she told our listeners, those same liberals "are choosing intellectual isolation" -- not the diversity they claim to want.
"Here's the important distinction between the two sides of that dais," Blackburn explained. "While one Democratic senator stated that he feared Barrett would usher in an era of conservative activism, he accidentally revealed that what Democrats want is an era of liberal activism. The Democrats, in their zeal to 'pack the court,' or at least 'balance' it... are looking for activists who will do the party's bidding. That's what they expect. Conservatives, on the other hand want constitutionalists who will call balls and strikes. If a law needs changing, that's our job in Congress, not the business of the judiciary."
Now that Barrett's nomination is headed to the full floor, make sure your voice is heard. Call or email both of your senators and urge them to fill that seat!
