(Bloomberg) -- Republican anger over the bitter confirmation fight for Justice Brett Kavanaugh apparently remains raw, spilling out on the first day of confirmation hearings on President Joe Biden's Supreme Court nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Several Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans invoked the rancor of hearings for Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett in the last three years, pointedly promising tough but “respectful” questioning of Jackson as they vet her for the court.
“There won't be this constant attack on you like there was on Kavanaugh and other judicial appointments,” South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said in his opening statement Monday. “You will not be vilified, you will not be attacked for your religious views, you will not be accused of something that you could not defend yourself against until it was too late.”
The dramatic 2018 hearing for Kavanaugh, the second of three Supreme Court picks by former President Donald Trump, turned into a partisan shouting match after Democrats brought in a last-minute witness, Christine Blasey Ford, who accused him of sexually assaulting her during a high school party. Kavanaugh angrily and “unequivocally” denied the accusation. He ultimately was confirmed on a party line 50-48 vote. Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein questioned Barrett's Catholic faith in her 2020 hearing, saying “The dogma lives loudly within you.”
The spectacle of the Kavanaugh hearing galvanized voters in both parties, particularly women, coming amid the rise of the “Me Too” movement. In the congressional election that followed a little more than a month later, a record number of women were elected. Democrats took control of the U.S. House, though Republicans were able to hold the Senate and gain two seats.
That fight added to the long-held grudge that Republicans have held over the way Democrats handled Republican court nominees, including Justice Clarence Thomas in 1991 and the failed nomination of Robert Bork in 1987. But Kavanaugh is a particular -- and fresh -- touchstone.
“We didn't have repeated choreographed interruptions of Chairman Durbin during his opening statements, like Democrats interrupted me for more than an hour during my opening statement on the Kavanaugh hearings,” Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on the committee, said, referring to Senator Dick Durbin.
GOP Senator Ted Cruz of Texas called the Kavanaugh hearing “one of the lowest moments in the history of this committee.”
“No is going to inquire into your teenage dating habits,” Cruz said to Jackson. “No one is going to ask you with mock severity, Do you like beer?”
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