Senate Republicans have the votes to hand President Trump the most consequential achievement of his presidency — the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett as his third conservative Supreme Court justice. But the fight to replace liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the high court will be bloody.
Just how bloody will be up to the Democrats, who will seek to wound Barrett without turning her into a martyr.
“Villainizing a woman creates a different level of sympathy than villainizing a man,” GOP strategist Ryan James Gidursky told The Post. “And if they attack her for her faith, there are tens of millions of Catholics in this country. You don’t want a religious war where the Democratic Party seems to be anti-Catholic.”
But in the heat of a presidential race, with a third of the Senate up for grabs on Election Day and a member of the Judiciary Committee — Kamala Harris — on their presidential ticket, Democrats are divided over how to mount an attack.
“So we’re not allowed to ask Catholics about Roe v. Wade because it hurts their feelings?” a Senate insider told The Post. “Let’s not pretend these Republicans would not be asking an agnostic liberal about their lack of faith. It won’t be the first or the last time a Supreme Court judge is asked about their religion.”
But a central theme of the Dem attack should be how GOP senators are going forward with confirming a justice in an election year, when many pledged they wouldn’t as they blocked President Obama’s nominee in 2016, the insider said.
“It’s about hypocrisy,” one Democratic Senate insider said. “The key to it is going to be … reminding voters where all these Republicans were on Merrick Garland and where they were about going on the record about filling vacancies.”
Others want to paint the nominee into a corner over the looming Supreme Court decision on the constitutionality of Obamacare.
“Republicans are rushing to put a justice on the Supreme Court who will back their lawsuit to overturn the Affordable Care Act, kicking millions off their health care and raising their costs in the middle of the pandemic,” argued former Democratic National Committee chair Donna Brazile.
The turbulence has at least one Senate Democrat begging for consistency from his colleagues.
“A little message discipline wouldn’t kill us,” tweeted Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz Friday.
But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, with 53 Republican senators in his caucus and little dissension in the ranks, holds all the cards.
Barrett, who meets with McConnell on Tuesday in Washington, was vetted for her current position on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals just three years ago, so the usual pre-hearing requirements will be completed quickly.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham is expected to schedule hearings during the week of Oct. 12 — even as he fights for his political life against a well-funded Democratic challenger back in South Carolina.
The hearings will offer another national platform for California Sen. Harris, just days after her vice presidential debate against Mike Pence — and will likely overlap with the second presidential debate between Trump and Joe Biden, set for Oct. 15.
That would leave just enough time for a final vote on Barrett’s nomination on Oct. 29 — five days before Election Day.
The timing could give Trump a crucial boost at the polls.
“It always benefits you if your side just won,” Gidursky said. “You don’t become more complacent. Your side won, that’s an exciting thing.”
“It absolutely energizes the president’s base,” said GOP consultant Rob Cole. “I think you’re going to see the secret majority … come out in droves on Election Day.”
But liberals — who have historically been less motivated than the right by judicial matters — are becoming galvanized, too. The Democrats’ online fundraising arm, ActBlue, raked in more than $170 million in the days after Ginsburg’s death.
With 21 Republican Senate seats at risk this cycle, compared to only 12 on the Democrats’ side, it would take a massive boost in GOP enthusiasm on Election Day to save the Republican majority — with surprise victories needed for senators like Maine’s Susan Collins, Iowa’s Joni Ernst, North Carolina’s Thom Tillis, Arizona’s Martha McSally and Colorado’s Cory Gardner, all of whom are struggling in the polls.
“I think the Senate will end up being 50-50,” Gidursky predicted. “I think we’ll have a hung Senate.”
As for the presidential race, “You get fired up for a particular candidate or not,” Cole said. “This is all about Trump.”
“At the end of the day, the fact that Trump gets a justice on the Court for 50 years is going to be a win for the future of the GOP.”
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