This week’s hearings to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett as Supreme Court Justice haven’t inspired quite the same level of baseless hysteria that accompanied Brett Kavanaugh’s hearings in 2018. That’s not because Democrats have suddenly come down with a case of moral principle. It’s because our precarious moment finds them in a somewhat delicate position.
Their shamelessly theatrical, totally unsubstantiated accusations of sexual impropriety against Kavanaugh left them looking vindictive and unserious. Dems can’t afford another self-own of that magnitude just before an election — not when their target is a whip-smart femme fatale whose major prospective weak points aren’t weak points at all.
It’s true that there is now a dishearteningly large contingency of leftists who will foam at the mouth on cue when informed that Barrett has committed the sin of… interracial adoption and working motherhood. You really have to work to be that stupid, but there are plenty of people out there “doing the work,” as they say. Tweedy authoritarian wantwit Ibram X. Kendi did his best as always to excel in bigoted idiocy (it’s the only category in which he stands a chance, you see), suggesting that ACB adopted children as “props” to illustrate her own virtue rather than, you know, to give them a future and a hope.
But the Democrats in the Senate, at least, are savvy enough to keep from saying the quiet part quite so loud. Senator Dianne Feinstein learned her lesson three years ago during Barrett’s federal circuit hearings. “The dogma lives loudly within you,” Feinstein proclaimed, and instantly became an object of contempt. The “dogma,” of course, is Catholicism, of which Barrett is an exemplary practitioner. What Democrats must do is insinuate that this makes her unsuited for public office (a claim as laughable as it is genuinely offensive) while not seeming to do so.
In other words: having finally learned their lesson from Kavanaugh (and before him Clarence Thomas, and before him Robert Bork), Republicans have strategically nominated someone whom the Left can’t smear without revealing the ugly implications of their nasty philosophy.
Trump and his team have outmaneuvered the Democrats on this at last. Having as usual no cogent arguments about why on earth we shouldn’t fill a vacant Supreme Court seat, the Left can only rely on slander and personal attacks. In this case, though, doing so cannot help but reveal them for the miserable cretins they are.
Because in fact, our ever-more radicalized progressives do on some level believe that interracial adoption is wrong, that Catholics are stone-age barbarians, and that women should either man up or shut up. Those aren’t outlandish exaggerations or straw men: they are necessary consequences of the Democrats’ explicit first principles.
It is of course amusing to see publications like Slate perform veritable backflips of hypocrisy, calling Barrett a “shameless careerist” for having the audacity to… work while a mom. But it’s far more telling that the Dems actually can’t attack ACB without being hypocritical, unless they want to give their own putrid game away.
If you think “building the kingdom of God” is an unacceptable aspiration for a person in American public life, then of course you’re going to find it inconceivable that a Catholic judge could rule impartially. If you hate the idea of a feminine woman prioritizing her family, then of course you’ll call her a “handmaid” (as if that’s a bad thing, and not the exalted title of the Virgin Mary herself). And if you’re incapable of seeing any human interaction in terms of anything other than race — if, in other words, you’re a racist — then of course you’ll be blind to the sacred tenderness of this elegant woman and her abounding family.
It’s delicious, I must confess, to watch Democrats tie themselves in knots to avoid saying what they really believe. I just hope the American people read between the lines. Because if a Left that looks like this gets the presidency, then unfortunately we won’t have to anymore.
Spencer Klavan is host of the Young Heretics podcast and assistant editor of the Claremont Review of Booksand The American Mind. He can be reached on Twitter at @SpencerKlavan.
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The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.