Republicans are hopeful that this week’s confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett will help them turn the page on President Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis and other news that has left the party behind in the polls.
“She is a star, and we’re confident that will shine through,” said a Republican close to the hearings.
“The Supreme Court hearings and the fact that Trump is going on the campaign trail can help Republicans create renewed momentum in the final weeks before the election,” said GOP strategist Ron Bonjean.
Barrett’s turn in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which began Monday, comes as Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden faces increasing scrutiny over his refusal to say whether he would support legislation to add more liberal justices by expanding the Supreme Court. A recent Washington Examiner/YouGov poll found the public was opposed to the idea, and reporters have grown irritated with the Democratic ticket’s evasiveness when asked about it.
Biden has dismissed court-packing as a Trump-generated distraction. He said last week that voters will “know my opinion on court-packing when the election is over. It’s a great question, and I don’t blame you for asking it, but you know the moment I answer that question, the headline in every one of your papers will be about that.”
“He’s refusing to answer about whether he’s going to pack the Supreme Court, upending 150 years of our judicial standards,” said Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday.
At the same time, a Morning Consult poll found rising support for Barrett’s nomination. A plurality backs her confirmation, 46% to 37%, up 9 percentage points from a previous survey. Democratic support is up 10 points to 24%, and their preference for waiting to see who wins the presidential election before confirming anyone is down 20 points to 59%.
The prevailing view among Republicans is that this is much more favorable ground on which to fight the election than the coronavirus and the controversies surrounding the presidential debates. It is possible the Democrats will overreach in attacking Barrett, possibly questioning her religious faith. And Republicans are happy to have an accomplished career woman front and center in the waning days of the 2020 campaign.
“It will help some of our more vulnerable members, especially Lindsey Graham and Thom Tillis,” said Republican strategist John Feehery. “And it helps to recast the debate to something other than Covid. Barrett is such a high-quality person and high-quality pick, I think the Democrats look foolish attacking her, which is why they are mostly ignoring her.”
South Carolina’s Graham heads the Senate Judiciary Committee, and North Carolinian Tillis is a member. Both face difficult reelection races.
“Democrats on the Judiciary Committee this morning revealed their support for activist judges who read rights like a right to late-term abortion into the Constitution,” said Maureen Ferguson, a senior fellow with the Catholic Association, in a statement. “Sen. Whitehouse specifically praised Justice Ginsburg’s defense of late-term, partial-birth abortion in the Gonzales vs. Carhart case — the 2007 Supreme Court decision upholding the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. A partial-birth abortion is a gruesome procedure.”
Sensitive to public opinion in some of the Rust Belt and upper Midwestern states that could decide the election, many Democrats have prioritized Obamacare over abortion in their arguments against Barrett’s nomination. “This nominee has said she wants to get rid of the Affordable Care Act — this president wants to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. Let’s keep our eye on the ball,” Biden falsely claimed in Ohio on Monday. “This is about less than one month [in which] Americans are going to lose their health insurance.”
Trump’s pledge to fill the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat with a proven conservative, backed by a list of prospective nominees compiled with the assistance of the conservative legal community, helped him win the 2016 election.
The president still faces an uphill battle for reelection. He trails Biden by 10.2 points in the RealClearPolitics national polling average less than a month from Election Day.
