Editorial: Sen. Cruz is ringmaster in circus he pledged wouldn't happen

Wednesday, March 23, 2022 -- Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, promised there would be no "circus" and "none of that disgraceful behavior" during the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee's hearings on the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson. He's become the ringmaster of a Republican circus.

Posted 9:00 a.m. Mar 23, 2022 — Updated 9:00 a.m. Mar 23, 2022

CBC Editorial: Wednesday, March 23, 2022; Editorial #8747

The following is the opinion of Capitol Broadcasting Company

“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.”

She did, as a public defender representing prisoners suspected of being terrorists, file petitions seeking their release, contending some were civilians wrongly being held as enemy combatants and were subject to torture – a violation of the Alien Tort Statute.

She was doing her job. She never said the president or secretary of defense were war criminals.

Cruz launched into a diatribe – complete with big posters and other visual aids - that was less directed at examining Jackson’s legal qualifications or judicial temperament than giving airtime to hit critical election-year Republican talking points – “critical race theory” and the 1619 Project. He attacked Jackson for her role as a board member of a Washington, D.C. private school – Georgetown Day School – founded in 1945 as the city’s first integrated school by three Jewish and three Black families when public schools were segregated.

She was grilled on the curriculum and educational materials and asked why there was instruction on “critical race theory.” She responded as a board member, she had not role in curriculum or the materials used in the classroom.

Cruz also asked about a 2020 Martin Luther Kind Day speech she’d given at the University of Michigan Law School honoring Black women in the civil rights movement. When she mentioned Nikole Hannah-Jones – the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist who has reported and written on the 1619 Project, was that an effort to promote “critical race theory?” The reference was to note Jones’ “provocative thesis” that ignited new thinking. It wasn’t an examination nor an endorsement.

She said “critical race theory,” taught in law schools, studies how race interacts with various policies and institutions. “It doesn't come up in my work as a judge. It's never something I've studied or relied on, and it wouldn't be something that I would rely on if I were on the Supreme Court.”

Among Cruz’s other complaints against the Democrats was that they’d blocked African-American and Hispanic judicial nominees offered up by Republican presidents. But he conveniently ignored the fact that it was Republicans who blocked, for 14 years, the appointment of a judge in the Eastern District of North Carolina.

They prevented U.S. Attorney Jennifer May-Parker in 2013 and Patricia Timmons-Goodson, a former state Supreme Court justice and vice chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, in 2016 from the bench. Eventually UNC Law School professor Richard Myers, nominated by President Donald Trump (who is Black and a Republican), was approved by 61-21 vote with 19 Democrats voting for his nomination.

Cruz promised there would be no “circus” and “none of that disgraceful behavior.” He’s become the ringmaster of a Republican sideshow.

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