Monday on Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) speculated Senate Democrat opposition to Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court went deeper than their opposition to her assumed beliefs on a handful of issues.
Instead, Kennedy speculated Democrats saw Barrett as someone who saw government operating as a representative entity instead of a declarative entity.
“I saw an indication of that in her confirmation for her Court of Appeal position,” he said. “You’re correct. It’s only Monday. So far, Judge Barrett has been called a religious bigot, a racist, an anti-feminist, an anti-public health. Her opponents haven’t gotten around yet to calling her an alien lizard person, but it’ll come before it’s over with, I’m afraid, that they’ll accuse her of drowning little warm puppies. That’s not what this is all about, though. I think almost all of my Democratic colleagues know that none of these things are true. This is what they’re upset about. Judge Barrett is a constitutionalist, which means she is a Madisonian, which means she believes in the separation of powers, which means she believes that Federal Judges are not politicians in robes, which means she believes that the United States Supreme Court is not supposed to be a mini Congress, which means she believes that Federal Judges are not supposed to try to rewrite the Constitution every other Thursday to advance a political or social agenda that they can’t get by the voters, which means that she believes that law is not supposed to be politics practiced a different way, and that upsets, not all.”
“But many of my Democratic colleagues because they don’t believe — well, let me put it in a positive way — they believe in declarative government, as opposed to a representative government,” Kennedy continued. “Not all of them, but many of them. In a representative government, the people control policy through their elected representatives. In declarative government, which we’ve been moving toward, policy is made by unelected judges and unelected members of the administrative state. Another word for bureaucrats. And Barrett believes that that should not be the case. That is — now, having said all that, I’m on the Judiciary Committee, Tucker. I’m going to do my job. I am going to test her. I’m going to probe her intellect, her temperament, her character, and her judicial philosophy. But I’ve started reading her interview articles and her opinions, and it is clear to me that she’s a constitutionalist, and that upsets a lot of my colleagues, not all, but many of them.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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