Cue the 'pearl-clutching': Lisa Murkowski reaps her vote to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court

Cue the 'pearl-clutching': Lisa Murkowski reaps her vote to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court
United States Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) (screenshot/@MSNBC/Twitter).
Brandon Gage
May 03, 2022

United States Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) is one of a handful of moderate Republicans left in Congress who supports abortion rights. But in the wake of Monday's leak of the Supreme Court's forthcoming reversals of Roe versus Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania versus Casey, Murkowski's vote to elevate Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett to the bench has come back to haunt her.

Barrett was nominated on September 26th, 2020, by then-President Donald Trump following the untimely death of Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a champion of reproductive liberty. Barrett, despite having almost no experience, was chosen at the urging of the Federalist Society because of her staunch opposition to protecting women's bodily autonomy.

During her confirmation hearings, Barrett assured skeptical Senators – notably Republican Susan Collins of Maine – that Roe was an established precedent that would not be overturned. Center-right lawmakers like Murkowski took her at her word over the warnings of reproductive rights groups, and she was confirmed 52-48 on October 26th, a mere eight days before the 2020 election.

Based on the 98-page opinion that was released by Politico on Monday, however, it is clear that Barrett and her Trump-appointed confederates on the High Court were lying under oath to the American people. Incidentally, Associate Justice Samuel Alito – the author of the leaked document – also duplicitously proclaimed during his Senate confirmation hearings in 2006 that Roe and Casey were settled laws of the land "based on stare decisis."

He added that "when a decision is challenged, and it is reaffirmed, that strengthens its value."

Watch Alito's exchange with lawmakers below via Politico:

Thus, on Tuesday, Murkowski tried to downplay the fact that she got played.

"Roe is still the law of the land. We don't know the direction that this decision will ultimately take," she told a gaggle of reporters inside the Capitol. "But if, if, it goes in the direction that this leaked copy has indicated, um, I will just tell you that it – it rocks my confidence in the Court right now."

Watch below via MSNBC:

Observers on social media saw straight through Murkowski's "revisionist nonsense" and "pearl-clutching."



Users were not about to let her "preposterous naïvete" off the hook.

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