GOP splits over labeling Black female Supreme Court pick a 'quota' hire

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

When news landed last week that there would be a Supreme Court vacancy for President Biden to fill, some in the right-wing pundit class sprang into action, saying Biden’s promise to fill the slot with a Black woman amounted to discrimination — even affirmative action or a quota.

-snip-

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) got the ball rolling by telling a local conservative radio host that he expected Republicans to all vote against the still-unnamed pick. “The irony is that the Supreme Court is at the very same time hearing cases about this sort of affirmative racial discrimination,” Wicker said, “while adding someone who is the beneficiary of this sort of quota.”

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) offered a somewhat gentler version of the argument, calling Biden’s promise “clumsy” and saying, “It adds to the further perception that the court is a political institution like Congress, when it is not supposed to be.”

Collins was pressed on a similar promise Ronald Reagan had made in 1980 to nominate a woman to the court. She maintained that what Biden did was different because it was done “as a candidate.” In fact, Reagan also made his promise as a candidate.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/gop-splits-over-labeling-black-female-supreme-court-pick-a-quota-hire/ar-AATkULq

[Beaverhausen]

1. In the history of this country there have been ZERO black women on the Supreme Court

There is nothing they can say about this fact. It's beyond time for this to happen.

[unblock]

2. I guess a couple centuries of exclusively white men was fine because they didn't *say* it out loud.

[Ocelot II]

3. You could say Clarence Thomas was a "quota" hire.

Bush I needed a Black appointee to take Thurgood Marshall's seat (the designated "Black" seat), but in those days there weren't very many Black judges; and very few of those were conservatives. But the GOP had to try to show they weren't really all that racist so they had to find a Black judge - however, he (never she) would have to be conservative. Thomas, who was certainly conservative, had been a judge for only about a year when he was appointed to SCOTUS, but although the ABA ranked him at its lowest level of "qualified," Bush I claimed he was the most qualified person. His career with SCOTUS has been singularly undistinguished; he was Scalia's mini-me, and now he's Alito's, and he very seldom speaks during oral arguments. Any of the women on Biden's short list are more qualified than Thomas by orders of magnitude, but they are being called quota hires.