WRAL: ““This will not be a political circus. This will not be the kind of character smear that sadly, our Democratic colleagues have gotten very good at.”
– U.S. Sen Ted Cruz, R-Texas, at the opening of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s confirmation hearings on U.S. Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson
It hardly took 24 hours for Sen. Ted Cruz to be true to his word. It has not been a political circus. Calling it a “character smear” wouldn’t be fair either.
Partisan political grandstanding, character assassination, “high-tech lynching” and out-and-out deceit might be the best ways to describe some of the questioning and performances of some Republicans on the committee – particularly Cruz and his fellow Texan Sen. John Cornyn.
“Why in the world would you call Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and George W. Bush war criminals in a legal filing?” Cornyn asked Jackson during Tuesday’s hearing. “Why would you do something like that? It seems so out of character?”
Her reply. She didn’t recall such a reference and “I did not intend to disparage the president or Secretary of Defense.”
That’s because it didn’t happen. Even in the evidence that Cornyn later provided there wasn’t a reference to Bush, Rumsfeld or anyone else as “war criminals.””