By Andrew Quigley
The unprecedented opposition, accompanied by unprecedented vitriol, by the Republican members of the U.S. Senate to the nomination of Suffolk County District Atty. Rachael Rollins for the position of U.S. Attorney for the Massachusetts district has laid bare their racist and misogynistic-driven agenda.
Here is what Tom Cotton, the odious Arkansas Senator, said during a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee in opposing Ms. Rollins’s nomination:
“Miss Rollins appears to measure success as a prosecutor not by how many victims and innocent people she protects, but rather by how many criminals she keeps from facing consequences. If she’s confirmed as the US attorney, the cartels and the gangs that are fueling violence and death in our communities will be gleeful. Rachael Rollins wants to destroy the criminal justice system from within. That’s not hyperbole.”
Cotton’s last line — “That’s not hyperbole” — ordinarily would be laughable, but unfortunately it is illustrative of the way that leading GOP politicians are gaslighting the country these days to appeal to the basest of their base.
Senator Cotton’s sham statement also has put on full display the propensity among leading GOP politicians to bully women, and that is doubly so for women of color. One should recall the vote by Mitch McConnell and the GOP-controlled Senate in 2017 that silenced Senator Elizabeth Warren during the confirmation hearing for Jeff Sessions as U.S. Attorney General when she read a letter (which already was part of the Congressional Record) by Coretta Scott King in 1986 about Sessions. Later, a male senator read the same letter — but without a peep from McConnell.
These GOP politicians are like the “tough” guys who have no hesitancy to engage in road-rage behavior when the other driver is a woman, but they shrink from honking, gesticulating, etc. if the other driver is a male.
Rachael Rollins has the full support of both of our U.S. Senators, Ed Markey and Ms. Warren, as well as the endorsement of many others, including former governor William Weld (who served as the U.S. Attorney in Mass. in the 1980s), Wayne Budd (another former U.S. Attorney here), Winthrop Police Chief Terence Delehanty, and Revere Police Chief David Callahan (both of whom work directly with the Suffolk D.A.’s office on a daily basis).
Despite the roadblocks thrown up by the GOP senators, Rachael Rollins’s nomination was confirmed by the full Senate (though without any support from a GOP senator) with a tie-breaking vote by vice-president Kamala Harris.
Andrew Quigley is a freelance writer and contributor to the Independent Newspaper Group.