U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley, the seven-term Republican senior Senator from Iowa, promised his side would not turn Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson‘s Supreme Court confirmation hearing Monday “into a spectacle,” yet proceeded to do just that.

Republicans are vastly opposed to Judge Jackson, who, as many have noted, is not just more qualified than every Supreme Court Justice currently on the bench was when they were nominated, but more qualified than at least three of them combined.

Grassley, 88, running for re-election this year, is the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. On Monday he delivered his opening statement, using it to promote his fictitious judicial theories, saying outright that he will use the hearing to determine if Judge Jackson subscribes to originalism – which only right-wing judges do.

“Originalism” was created in the 1980s to turn the country back to the days of its founding. The Constitution was written as a living document, to be interpreted over the ages and amended as necessary. Grassley and most Republicans support this made-up theory of originalism.

He is being widely attacked for that and many other remarks he made.

“Never has an endless lecture from an impossibly boring man of no principles been so intolerable to listen to,” said professor of international relations, political scientist, and journalist David Rothkopf as Grassley spoke.

He added:

“Lindsey Graham and Chuck Grassley have already turned today’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearings into a spectacle. For them, it’s a Day of Festivus to air all their hypocritical grievances about the past,” said CNN’s Keith Boykin.

The Nation’s Justice Correspondent Elie Mystal observed: “Grassley says Democrats voted against nominees that were ‘diverse racially.’ This is a good time to remind you that Donald Trump’s nominees were 85% white and 75% male and he’s the only president to not appoint a black male judge since Nixon.
The GOP is obsessed with identity.”

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Reprinted with permission from Alternet