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What’s Wrong With Amy Coney Barrett?

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What’s wrong with Amy Coney Barrett?

Not that she’s a charismatic Christian.

Not that she’s a member of the faith community, “People of Praise.”

And not that Antonin Scalia was her mentor.

What’s wrong with Amy Coney Barrett is the man who has nominated her to the Supreme Court and the circumstances under which he chose to forward this nomination.

Which is to say that the problem here is not Amy Coney Barrett.

It is that a President who has so relentlessly divided our nation against itself has seized yet another opportunity to exacerbate our divisions. He could have done otherwise. He could, for once, have exhibited an scintilla of statesmanship and delayed a nomination until after the outcome of the election. An election, which by the way, he works daily to de-legitimate with innuendo and lies.

By all indications, Amy Coney Barrett is a person of strong and commendable character as well as considerable learning. The same cannot be said of the man who has nominated her or of the Republican Party leaders who have developed a convenient case of amnesia regarding their own words and actions.

The President and “leader” McConnell have chose to ram through a Supreme Court nomination in the closing weeks of bitter Presidential election even as people, in some states, are already voting.

In her column yesterday in the Wall St. Journal, Peggy Noonan said that four plus years ago she had supported not filling Antonin Scalia’s seat until after the 2016 election. She continues,

“Likewise in this case: Hold off, lower the temperature. It was Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat, held for 27 years by a liberal icon of the court. In a great and varied nation of 330 million people some tact is in order, some give, some deference to what is important to others. We won’t survive otherwise. (italics added)

“So we’re about to have — in the middle of pandemic, an unprecedented economic emergency, a new and enduring wave of racial division, and a distinctively passionate presidential election featuring an incumbent who won’t even say he will accept the final result –a new layer of turmoil, the confirmation of a new Supreme Court justice.”

Trump and McConnell had — with Justice Ginsburg’s death — an opportunity to lower the temperature. Instead, they have turned up the heat for partisan gain.

Trump and McConnell had an opportunity to demonstrate respect not only for RBG and her legacy and for those across the aisle and around the nation whose views differ with their own. They have spat upon that opportunity. They have chosen to enhance their own power at the expense of the health of a dangerously polarized nation.

Well, on second thought, there is something wrong with Amy Coney Barrett. She said “yes.” She accepted Donald Trump’s nomination.

 

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