The Patriot Post® · The Barrett Hearings: A Primer

If you’re among the handful of people who’ve been diligently watching the NBA Finals, you might’ve missed the news: Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s Senate confirmation hearings began this morning.

The hearings, which take place in the 22-member Senate Judiciary Committee, kicked off at 9 a.m. ET today and will run through Thursday. Today’s session began with an introductory statement by Republican Chairman Lindsey Graham and ranking member Dianne “the dogma lives loudly within you” Feinstein, followed by a 10-minute opening statement by each committee member, then an introduction of Judge Barrett by Indiana Senator Todd Young and former Notre Dame Law School Dean Patricia O'Hara.

Barrett will then deliver her opening remarks, in which she’s expected to praise two deceased giants of the Supreme Court: Antonin Scalia, who was her mentor, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose death on September 18 made available this seat on the High Court. Barrett, a constitutional originalist in the mold of Scalia, is also expected to stress that it’s the courts’ responsibility to enforce the Rule of Law, not to solve every problem or right every wrong, and that the policies and value judgments of government must be made by the two branches of government that are accountable to the American people at the ballot box.

The full text of Judge Barrett’s opening remarks can be found here.

None of this will matter to Senate Democrats, however, as they’ve already mapped out their strategy and spoon-fed it to an eager and obedient mainstream media.

This strategy was rolled out on Sunday morning’s news talk shows. Delaware Democrat Senator Chris Coons, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, argued that the GOP’s efforts to seat Judge Barrett before the end of President Donald Trump’s four-year term constitutes — wait for it — court packing. This despite the term’s clear meaning related to expanding the number of seats on the Court and filling those seats with ideologically like-minded justices. “I’m going to be laying out the ways in which Judge Barrett’s views … are not just extreme, they’re disqualifying,” said Coons. Confirmation, he added, “constitutes court packing.”

Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin, also a member of the Judiciary Committee, likewise corrupted the meaning of the term “court packing,” saying, “The American people have watched Republicans packing the Court over the last three and a half years, and they brag about it — that they’ve taken every vacancy and filled it.”

This perversion of a particular term has a purpose. Democrats are trying to turn the tables on what has, for the past two weeks, become an uncomfortable and unanswerable question for their presidential nominee, Joe Biden. Time after time, Biden has been called upon to answer a simple but critical question: whether he’d pack the Supreme Court with liberal justices if elected. At every turn, he’s refused to tell the voters what his plans are, claiming that his answer would immediately become the focus of attention. Of course, any effort to illegitimately pack the Supreme Court, which has worked perfectly well with nine justices for the past 151 years, deserves the American people’s undivided attention.

Biden’s answer to whether the American people have a right to know his position? “No, they don’t.”

No less a Trump-hating leftist than Jake Tapper has even grown tired of the Biden campaign’s disingenuous narrative. “How is [confirmation] not constitutional?” he repeatedly asked Biden flack Kate Bedingfield. Tapper, whose facial expressions tend to betray his feelings, looked like he was eating a bag of lemons as Bedingfield continued to duck and dodge.

Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse also registered his contempt: “It’s grotesque that Vice President Biden won’t answer that really basic question,” he said. “And it isn’t just one branch of government. What [Democrats are] really talking about — or refusing to talk about — is the suicide bombing of two branches of government.”

That pretty much sums up the Democrats’ desperate game plan. The next few days will determine whether the Leftmedia allows them to get away with it.