Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., joined a growing chorus of Republicans bashing President Joe Biden’s Supreme Court nominee — well before the president has picked anyone — even as Republican leaders try to avoid a losing fight ahead of the midterms.
Republican Senate leaders worry that picking a fight over Biden’s nominee to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, when they lack enough votes to block the nomination, would be “counterproductive” and could “backfire” by distracting from key election issues, according to Wednesday’s edition of Politico Playbook. (Judicial nominations cannot be blocked through a Senate filibuster, a change introduced by Republicans when they held the majority.) Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told members on Tuesday that replacing a liberal justice with another liberal would not affect the balance of the court, especially after the party packed the court with conservatives under former President Donald Trump.
Black woman to the court, even though Trump and former President Ronald Reagan similarly vowed to nominate women to diversify a court that has been dominated by white men for generations.
“No. 1, I want a nominee who knows a law book from a J.Crew catalog,” Kennedy told Politico Tuesday after meeting with the GOP leaders. “No. 2, I want a nominee who’s not going to try to rewrite the Constitution every other Thursday to try to advance a ‘woke agenda.'”
Kennedy, an Oxford-educated lawyer, and career politician rebranded himself as a folksy Republican after a long stint as a Democrat. Louisiana publications have likened his one-liners to Foghorn Leghorn but people who knew him before he became a prominent Republican told BuzzFeed News last year that it’s all an act (which he denies).
“John Kennedy is not folksy — he’s just offensive,” MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan tweeted in response to Kennedy’s comment to Politico.
“Kennedy manages to squeeze in sexism, racism, and his fake down-home Foghorn Leghorn bit all in about 15 words,” wrote Fred Wellman, the former executive director of the Lincoln Project. “Enough is enough with this con artist.”
Kennedy rejected GOP leaders’ pleas to tone down the rhetoric on Biden’s nomination.
“I think some members of leadership think they can control what people want to talk about,” he told Politico. “I don’t agree with that proposition. I’m going to talk about what I want to talk about, and if they don’t like that, they can call somebody who cares.”
Kennedy has frequently used the puzzling J.Crew quip in response to a range of issues.
“Anyone who knows a law book from a J.Crew catalog does not take this charge seriously,” he declared during Trump’s first impeachment.
“Anyone who knows a law book from a J.Crew catalog knows that Democrats’ attempt to add D.C. as a state is unconstitutional,” he said in a Fox News interview last year.
“Nobody knows what he even means by ‘a law book,'” tweeted attorney Max Kennerly. “A casebook? Only students use those. The Federal Reporter? No one calls that a ‘book.’ A John Grisham novel?”
