Lindsey Graham Says the Quiet Part Out Loud; Admits GOP-Controlled Senate Wouldn’t Even Let KBJ Have a Committee Hearing

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) brought the political bickering over Ketanji Brown Jackson into full view by saying her Supreme Court nomination would have been shut down if Republicans were in control of the Senate.

Graham made his comments as the Senate Judiciary Committee met on Monday to vote on Jackson’s nomination. Graham confirmed he would vote against her even though he previously voted in favor of Jackson’s nomination to the D.C. Court of Appeals, and this will be Graham’s first time opposing a Supreme Court pick in his Senate career.

The senator explained himself as “the Supreme Court is different from the Circuit Court. I voted for her at the D.C. Circuit Court level because I’m disposed to do that.”

“Now that you’re talking about the Supreme Court, you’re making policy, not just bound by it,” he said.

Graham’s went on to say Jackson’s nomination was “really embraced by the most radical people in the Democratic movement to the exclusion of everybody else.” His remarks come after he aggressively questioned Jackson while complaining about how Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was treated during his own hearings.

Graham went on to argue Jackson is an “activist to the core,” and her nomination was Biden administration pandering to “the hard left.” When he eventually reached the subject of Jackson being the first African American woman to serve on the Supreme Court, Graham complained about how President Joe Biden promised to filibuster Judge Janice Rogers Brown years ago when Biden was a senator and Brown was considered to replace Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

“When you had a chance to support an African-American conservative, you used her ideology against her,” Graham said. “You blocked her from being considered by this committee, and we’re supposed to be like trained seals over here clapping when you appoint a liberal. That’s not going to work.”

Graham concluded with a warning:

If we get back the Senate and we’re in charge of this body and there is judicial openings, we will talk to our colleagues on the other side. But if we were in charge, she would not have been before this committee. You would have had somebody more moderate than this. So, I want you to know right now, the process you started to go to a simple majority vote is going rear its head here pretty soon when we’re in charge. Then we’ll talk about judges differently.

Republicans previously refused to consider Merrick Garland’s appointment to the Supreme Court after the death of Antonin Scalia. The common argument at the time was that the White House and the Senate were controlled by different parties, so the nomination should have been decided by the victor of the 2016 election.

Watch above, via CSPAN2.