The left is stepping up their attacks on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Progressives are determined to smear Thomas over decades-old allegations of sexual harassment against him from Anita Hill, according to opinion writer Jake Hoffman. The judge has faced renewed calls for impeachment from liberals as Democrats look to block a conservative takeover of the judiciary.
Thomas has long been a target of progressives, but heightened partisan stakes and a cultural referendum on gender norms have liberals calling for his ouster with increasing urgency.
Out to get Clarence Thomas
It has been decades since Thomas overcame what he called the “high-tech lynching” of a black conservative as he faced allegations of sexual harassment that nearly derailed his confirmation to the Supreme Court in 1991. But a newly radicalized left is revisiting and intensifying a decades-long campaign against him, Hoffman writes.
Hill’s accusations received renewed attention as the #MeToo movement picked up momentum last year, and particularly during Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the court in the fall. Kavanaugh’s hearing led many liberals to revisit Hill’s accusations against Thomas, as many declared that Hill had been wrongly ignored.
But that’s not all, Hoffman writes: New York Magazine published an article in February 2018 titled, “The Case for Impeaching Clarence Thomas” with the suggestive subtitle, “Do You Believe Her Now?” One Democrat, Barbara L’Italien of Massachusetts, even picked up on this ferment in the midterms, making Thomas’ impeachment part of her campaign platform for a failed congressional bid.
2020 hopeful and former Vice President Joe Biden apologized to Thomas’ accuser this week for his handling of her allegations when he was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991. When Hill said that his apology was not enough, she received an outpouring of sympathy from the media, who continued to keep Thomas at arm’s length.
Even though Biden voted against confirming Thomas, the left is still angry with him for the way he handled Hill’s questioning. It would seem the left has made up their mind that Thomas is a villain; according to Hoffman, the “debate” over Thomas’ impeachment isn’t going anywhere.
Indeed, the left again attacked Thomas as an extremist and an enemy of press freedom last month for his opinion in a First Amendment case in which he challenged a landmark libel law. Some even compared him to southern segregationists over the issue — validating what Thomas has long said about black conservatives and the progressives who challenge their intellectual independence from the left.
War against conservative judges
The renewed attacks on Thomas come at a time of high-stakes for the left, as President Donald Trump confirms conservatives to federal courts with lightning speed. Trump’s success in confirming a second Supreme Court justice to the high court intensified fears on the left of Roe v. Wade‘s repeal, prompting a depraved late-term abortion push.
The urgency of protecting their sacrament — abortion — has spilled over into a no-holds-barred war against conservative judges. A devout Catholic and staunch constitutionalist, Thomas is the most conservative judge on the Supreme Court and a natural target of the left’s ire.
Indeed, Thomas is an impassioned advocate of religious freedom, having recently decried the use of religious tests by Senate Democrats against Trump’s judicial nominees, and a staunch opponent of abortion. Naturally, progressives have long attacked him as a far-right extremist.
He has also been, to progressives’ dismay, enormously influential on the Supreme Court and on the legal thinking of generations of conservative judges. Some 20% of Thomas’ clerks have found work in the Trump administration or have been nominated to the judiciary.
But unfortunately for Dems, Thomas has recently quashed rumors of his retirement, so it looks like he’s not going anywhere any time soon — at least not if the left doesn’t get their way.
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