This moment is what we’re here for.
President Trump has, once again, nominated an extremely capable jurist who will protect the Constitution potentially for decades hence, and she’s an accomplished woman of the highest integrity.
So, predictably, Amy Coney Barrett has been the subject of all sorts of misleading attacks, and progressives have invented ridiculous process reasons to deny her a confirmation vote.
When there is so much nonsense to knock down, we go into overdrive to do it. We are now in the same mode that we were in during the Kavanaugh fight — on high alert, rebutting all the shoddy journalism and tendentious arguments.
Which is why I’d like to ask you to contribute to our flash fundraiser.
Start at the beginning of this latest chapter. Or before the beginning. Back in August, when people were starting to discuss in earnest the possibility of a court vacancy, Dan McLaughlin wrote a piece titled “History Is on the Side of Republicans Filling a Supreme Court Vacancy in 2020.”
The piece really exploded after the news of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, when Senate Republicans were considering whether to try to confirm a nominee before the election.
It’s impossible to exaggerate the influence of Dan’s piece. It seems that every Republican senator who matters read it. It sounded like Mitt Romney was cribbing from it in his statement coming out in favor of a vote. A high-ranking White House official personally thanked me for it.
There’s no doubt that it fortified Republicans when there were some murmurings, based on bad history and bad reasoning, that they’d give up the historic opportunity to fill the Ginsburg seat.
I’ve often noted in these missives that we don’t do clickbait, which limits our ability to churn out Web advertising revenue. Dan’s piece shows the advantage, instead, of being meticulous, thorough, and utterly authoritative — his story couldn’t be ignored, and it wasn’t.
Dan, by the way, demolished his critics in this follow-up essay. And when Kamala Harris repeated a false story about Abraham Lincoln and a Supreme Court opening, Dan called her on it with a post that became among the most viral things we’ve ever published.
I humbly propose to you that Dan’s work alone is worth your chipping in to make it possible for us to continue to do what we do.
But his stuff is only the tip of the iceberg. The indispensable Ed Whelan and his colleagues at Bench Memos have addressed in detail every erroneous and stilted attack on Barrett’s jurisprudence and record.
Charlie Cooke has been at his excoriating best— which, for the record, means very excoriating — on the Left’s preposterous anti-Barrett arguments and Joe Biden’s ridiculous evasions on court packing.
Alexandra DeSanctis has written compellingly about how Barrett, rightfully considered, should be a feminist hero. She has defended Barrett against the media’s perverse attacks on her participation in a Christian faith community. She has held Democratic senators and Kamala Harris in particular to account for their broadsides against the Catholic faith of Trump judicial nominees.
And we’ve run much, much more by Ramesh Ponnuru, Andy McCarthy, David Harsanyi, and me, among others — all standing up for Barrett.
If you think Barrett is a credit to the judiciary, not to say to the human race;
If you think it’s absolutely essential that Republicans win this one;
If you think there should be a tireless, substantive, and principled journalistic advocate for conservative constitutionalism;
If you think the attacks on Barrett from the media and the Left have to be rebutted in real time and with indisputable facts and acute analysis . . .
Well, then, I urge you to give to our cause, if you can. Serious opinion journalism is never a profitable enterprise, but, as we’ve already seen in this debate, it can be very consequential.
We’re honored to be shoulder to shoulder with you in the effort to ensure that a few weeks from now we will be referring to Justice Amy Coney Barrett and looking forward to her contributions to the Court and this country for a long time to come.
Thank you.
