Amy Coney Barrett is not qualified to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States. Every circumstance of her acquiescence to this nomination disqualifies her. Her extremism disqualifies her. Her refusal to say she will not recuse herself from a challenge to the action from Donald Trump—the primary reason he wants her on the court—disqualifies her. It's all of those problems that are driving Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham to jam her nomination through at breakneck speed.
By the end of Wednesday, Politico's Capitol Hill reporter Sarah Ferris reckons, Barrett will have met with about a third of Senate Republicans. She has already begun her hearing preparation, getting her schtick on the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which she has called unconstitutional in previous statements, and Roe v. Wade—she is a rabid forced birther who belongs to an extreme charismatic Catholic sect. Her confirmation hearing is in 12 days, with McConnell and Graham fully intending to have her seated before the election, in time to hear arguments in Trump's challenge to the Affordable Care Act on Nov. 10 and in time to rule on a potential Trump challenge to the election results.
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McConnell and Graham want—need—to get this done before the election. Graham is in a tight race and has got to have every Republican vote back home in South Carolina; seizing the SCOTUS majority with a partisan extremist will do it for him. McConnell knows that a delay until the lame duck session after the election will be too dangerous for that goal. There's no guarantee at all that he'd be able to get his 51 votes if the election swings as hard against Republicans as polls now suggest it will.
As Barrett's past writings and decisions—as well as her 2017 confirmation hearings for the Appeals Court seat she now holds—receive more scrutiny, the need to ram this through at breakneck speed becomes even more apparent for Graham and McConnell. Even Trump is aware of some potential hurdles, like abortion. He insisted in Tuesday night's debate that abortion wasn't on the ballot this election because of the Supreme Court and told Biden "you don't know her view on Roe v. Wade." At least it seems like that was what he was getting at. It was all pretty chaotic, but Trump did make sure to get that in.
Looking at her 2017 hearing, you can see how clever she was in walking a tightrope on the issue. In questioning from Sens. Mazie Hirono and Dianne Feinstein, Barrett was very careful to sat that as an appellate judge, she would consider Roe a "super-precedent," more than 40 years old and having survived multiples challenges. "One thing I would observe is that, for a Court of Appeals, all Supreme Court precedent is super-precedent," Barrett said. "So as I had said to Chairman [Charles] Grassley, as a Court of Appeals judge, if I were confirmed, I would follow all Supreme Court precedent without fail." She added again that Roe is "40 years old, and it's clearly binding on all Courts of Appeals. And so it's not open to me or up to me, and I would have no interest in as a Court of Appeals judge challenging that precedent. It would bind." She did it again at another point: "I'm being considered for a position on a Court of Appeals, and there would be no opportunity to be a no vote on Roe. And as I said to the committee, I would faithfully apply all Supreme Court precedent." But when she's on the Supreme Court, and has a chance to be a “no” vote on Roe? She sure left that door open a mile wide.
On the ACA, Barrett has criticized Chief Justice John Roberts (he's gotta be really excited at the prospect of serving with her) in arguing that he should have found the law unconstitutional because of the individual mandate being beyond Congress' authority. In 2012, she signed a public statement of protest against the the birth control benefit included in the law, saying coverage of birth control was "assault on religious liberty and the rights of conscience." The chances that she'll uphold the law are slim. The chances that she would allow any expansion of the ACA are slimmer.
The health coverage for something like 130 million people with medical histories that would have precluded them from having health insurance pre-ACA hangs in the balance with the Supreme Court. Women's bodily autonomy hangs in the balance. What's left of civil rights hangs in the balance. This seat flipping from humanitarian Ruth Bader Ginsburg to far-right extremist Amy Coney Barrett would be the most profound shift on the Supreme Court since Antonin Scalia was put on the court after Chief Justice Warren Burger's retirement in 1986.
McConnell and Graham are aware of that, too. They know just how radical what they are doing right now is, just how massive a departure from every governing norm it is, and just how much her presence on the court could upend ... everything. That's why there’s the need to rush. They don't want any Republican who might still have a shred of principle left to have time to think about it.