5 interesting things said on day 1 of Barrett confirmation hearings
Joni Ernst: Democrats are working to ‘undermine, coerce, and confuse the American people’
Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, who finds herself in a competitive battle for re-election, slammed Democrats’ strategy to “undermine” the nomination of Barrett during her opening remarks.
“Instead of entering into this nomination process with an open mind and a desire to understand this woman who has been nominated for the highest court in the land, the focus is on a plan or a strategy, a series of tactics to undermine, coerce and confuse the American people,” Ernst declared. The Senator explained that Democrats planned to “undermine you as a person, undermine your family and undermine what you hold dear.”
“Women all over the world are painfully familiar with this strategy. We are all too often perceived and judged based on who someone else needs or wants us to be, not on who we actually are,” she added.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
According to Ernst, Democrats want to paint Barrett as a “TV or cartoon version of a religious radical, a so-called ‘handmaid’ that feeds into all of the ridiculous stereotypes that they have set out to lambaste people of faith in America.” She recalled how Democrats have “made these types of religious attacks on nearly every Supreme Court nominated by a Republican president in the modern era.”
Ernst pushed back on the notion that Barrett, “a working mother of seven with a strong record of professional and academic accomplishment, couldn’t possibly respect the goals and desires of today’s women.” She also dismissed the presumption that Barrett, as a “practicing Catholic with a detailed record of service,” does not have compassion.
“It’s really quite simple what your opponents are doing,” Ernst said to Barrett. “They are attacking you as a mom and a woman of faith because they cannot attack your qualifications.” As Ernst’s remarks came to a close, she held up Barrett as an example of “what moms can do.”
