Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said the quiet part out loud on Monday when he declared that President Joe Biden’s Supreme Court nominee wouldn’t get a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee if Republicans held the majority. Prior to the committee’s vote to advance the nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, Graham explained why he is now against her nomination despite previously voting to confirm her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. “Now that you’re talking about Supreme Court, you’re making policy not just bound by it,” he said, adding that Jackson is an “activist to the core” who’s been embraced by the most “radical people in the Democratic movement.” He also groused yet again about her supposedly lenient sentencing in child-porn cases, a largely refuted GOP talking point that’s been negatively received by the public. He then concluded with a warning: “If we get back the Senate and we are in charge of this body and there is judicial openings, we will talk to our colleagues on the other side,” he proclaimed. “But if we are in charge, she would not have been before this committee. You would have had somebody more moderate than this.” Back in 2016, President Barack Obama’s moderate Supreme Court choice Merrick Garland was denied a hearing by a GOP-majority Senate, and the opening was carried over to Donald Trump’s presidency.
