06 April 2022

She's OK "IN THE MAINSTREAM": Surprising Change-of-Mind for Utah Republican Senator Mitt Romney

He was one of three Republican Senators who switched sides in what is still a divided Congress, just before they go on a two-week break and other news takes over all the headlines as we go onto another news cycle.

Mitt Romney Explains His Surprising Reversal On Ketanji Brown Jackson

The Utah senator is supporting President Joe Biden's Supreme Court nominee after voting against her for a lower court position last year
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) is supporting Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson for a seat on the Supreme Court after opposing her nomination to a lower court last year.

On Monday, the Utah Republican voted to advance Jackson’s nomination to the Supreme Court, a rare reversal in the deeply divided Senate, where ugly confirmation fights over the highest court in the land are quickly becoming the norm.

“In her previous confirmation vote, I had concerns about whether or not she was in the mainstream,” Romney told reporters on Tuesday. “And having spent time with her personally and reviewing her testimony before Congress [I] became convinced that she is in the mainstream.”

In announcing his support for Jackson, which came as a bit of a surprise, Romney called the judge a “well-qualified jurist” and a “person of honor” even though he said they may differ on ideological grounds. . .

Republicans launched ugly and misleading accusations against Jackson over her quite mainstream record of sentencing sex offenders, cherry-picking cases and ignoring similar sentences handed down by Republican-appointed judges. The GOP senators who are backing Jackson are even being smeared as “pro-pedophile” by some on the right.

. . .Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), meanwhile, was far more explicit on that point, suggesting Monday that Republicans would not have held hearings on Jackson’s nomination if they were in control of the Senate.

. . .Graham voted to confirm Jackson to her current seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit last year. But in a reverse-Romney move, Graham is opposing Jackson’s nomination to the Supreme Court ― the first time he’ll oppose a Supreme Court pick since joining the Senate in 2003."

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