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Conservative Trump Critic George Conway Says New Supreme Court Nominee is ‘Eminently Qualified’

 

George Conway

Conservative Trump critic George Conway has a long track record of publicly bashing the president, but he’s hardly opposing the recent nomination of Seventh Circuit Appellate Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the United States Supreme Court. If anything, it is quite the opposite.

Conway was asked if it is possible if some Republican senators will vote against confirming her if they believe is is not qualified.

“No,” said Conway on Saturday. “Not a chance. She is eminently qualified to serve on the Supreme Court.” In later responding to the same Twitter user, he wrote that there was “no reason to doubt [Barrett’s] fairness or integrity.”

The exchange started with Conway posting a 2013 article in which Barrett, a constitutional law professor at Notre Dame Law School, discussed the landmark Supreme Court cases Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

“I think it is very unlikely at this point that the court is going to overturn Roe [v. Wade], or Roe [v. Wade] as curbed by [Planned Parenthood v.] Casey,” she said, according to The Observer, a student paper. “The fundamental element, that the woman has a right to choose abortion, will probably stand,” she said. “The controversy right now is about funding. It’s a question of whether abortions will be publicly or privately funded.”

The death of liberal Supreme Court judge Ruth Bader Ginsberg on September 18 gave President Donald Trump a third nomination in his term–yet another opportunity to shape the highest court to his liking for years to come. A recurring element in his term has been to what extent his nominees will oppose Roe v. Wade or otherwise restrict access to abortion.

Attorney and Law&Crime columnist Elura Nanos has examined how Barrett may help restrict, if not eliminate, a constitutional right to abortion.

From Monday, before Trump announced the nomination of Barrett:

Amy Coney Barrett, like Justice Antonin Scalia for whom she clerked, describes herself as an “originalist.”  That means her constitutional philosophy is based in doing what the actual writers of the document wanted. That viewpoint is at odds with Roe‘s grounding in an implied First Amendment right to privacy.

Coney Barrett signed a joint letter in 2015, in which she attested to “the value of human life from conception to natural death.” She told Notre Dame Magazine that “life begins at conception.” Coney Barrett might well base her argument for overturning Roe in an expanded view of legal “personhood” to include those post-conception but pre-birth. The Supreme Court has expanded the reach of individual rights before — in the context of civil rights guarantees to women and Black people.

You can read the full article here.

Conway’s take on Barrett soured some on him, at least from some with left-leaning politics.

“Amazing that George Conway is trending because his leftist friends are mad he’s saying the obvious about ACB and so now he must be a Trump-loving plant,” wrote conservative NY Post columnist Karol Markowicz. “This whole era is so exhausting.”

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