Mitt’s Mistake

I happen to think Mitt Romney is a pretty good member of the United States Senate. Disagreements aside, he brings ideas and a unique kind of independence to the job.

Especially disagreeable, in my estimation, however, is the statement he’s released announcing that he will vote to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court.

In a world where members of both parties crossed the aisle to support each other’s nominees to the bench, it would be an eminently reasonable decision and rationale. In this one, it’s malpractice. Democrats have for decades waged war on Republican nominees, with consequences both political and personal. Only three Democrats — each representing one of the reddest states in the nation — voted to confirm Neil Gorsuch in 2017. A year and change later, only West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, who faced a reelect bid a month later, voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh. The rest of the Democratic Caucus participated in the evidence-free smearing of Kavanaugh as a gang rapist.

Manchin’s political motivation for supporting Kavanaugh was made plain when he declined to vote for Amy Coney Barrett two years later. With room to breathe between then and his next stint on the ballot, Manchin regressed to the mean. Not a single Democrat backed Barrett.

All this just in the last few years — forget not the hell Democrats inflicted upon Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, and Miguel Estrada.

But this is not meant as an argument for revanchist scalp-trading. I join Andy in his arguments against smearing Judge Jackson. And while I would not vote to confirm her — I doubt she will interpret the Constitution according to its original meaning, which is the job — I’m not riled up by Romney choosing to extend some courtesy to the president by making qualifications and temperament the basis of his decision, rather than judicial philosophy.

I am disappointed, though, by the combination of his decision and explanation. Taken together, they provide political cover not only for the nominee, but for the idea that Democrats’ universal opposition to Republicans’ nominees can be justified by some logical reasoning. What Romney writes is fine, but there is no reason why he should not have tacked on an explainer noting the contrast between his decision and Democrats’ conduct, dating all the way back to Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden’s behavior in 1986 during the Bork hearings.

Speak to their lies. Make note of the inhumanity of what they did to Clarence Thomas, and the tragic ramifications of Dick Durbin’s rejecting Miguel Estrada — explicitly on the basis of his race. Review the complete lack of evidence available to so much as suspect Brett Kavanaugh of being a sexual predator, much less indict him as so many of Romney’s colleagues did in 2018. Speak to Amy Coney Barrett’s accomplishments and brilliance.

Without observing the difference in how the two parties’ nominees are treated, Romney is at best helping Democrats make the argument that while his conscience allows him to vote for Jackson, theirs simply won’t (ever) let them cross the aisle. At worst, it suggests to the public that Democrats nominate reasonable jurists who even some red-state Republicans can support, while Republicans nominate radicals that their opponents cannot bring themselves to get behind.

If Romney wants to be the bigger person on the judiciary, that’s okay. But without a little medicine to go with the sugar, there will be no change in behavior from his less generous colleagues.