This truly is one of the worst things I’ve ever seen the Republicans do and that’s saying something. It goes way beyond their anti-democratic tactics to something extremely dark and occult. They have no limits:
The online world of adherents to the QAnon conspiracy theory sprang into action almost as soon as Senator Josh Hawley tweeted his alarm: that Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, the Biden administration’s Supreme Court nominee, had handed down sentences below the minimum recommended in federal guidelines for possessing images of child sexual abuse.
“An apologist for child molesters,” the QAnon supporter Zak Paine declared in a video the next day, on March 17, asserting without evidence that Democrats were repeatedly “elevating pedophiles and people who can change the laws surrounding punishment” for pedophiles.
By Wednesday, as Judge Jackson appeared for the third day before the Senate Judiciary Committee, claims that she was lenient toward people charged with possessing the illegal imagery had emerged as a recurring theme in her questioning by Republicans.
“Every judge who does what you are doing is making it easier for the children to be exploited,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, picking up the line of attack.
Never mind that those sentences did not come up at Judge Jackson’s confirmation hearing last year to a federal appeals court, that other judicial nominees have faced no questions about similar sentencing decisions, or that a former federal prosecutor called the allegations “meritless to the point of demagoguery” in the conservative National Review.
The line of attack has set off a new debate over the Republican Party’s stance toward QAnon. A White House spokesman this week accused Mr. Hawley of pandering to the conspiracy theory’s believers among his party’s rank and file, calling his comments an “embarrassing QAnon-signaling smear.” Conservatives, in return, blasted the Biden administration for invoking the specter of QAnon for its own political agenda, to fire up the Democratic base without addressing the questions.
“Left Invokes QAnon After Josh Hawley Exposes Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Soft Record on Child Sex Offenders,” declared a headline on the right-wing website Breitbart that was widely shared this week in QAnon circles.
A spokesman for Senator Hawley declined to comment on his motivations.
Although few QAnon followers appeared to take notice of Judge Jackson’s sentencing record before Senator Hawley’s tweets, her judicial career had touched the roots of the conspiracy theory: an earlier internet myth known as Pizzagate.
That debunked theory held that Satan-worshiping Democrats were trafficking children out of the basement of a Washington restaurant, and in 2017 a believer armed with an assault rifle stormed in and fired his weapon. Judge Jackson, as a district court judge, sentenced him to four years in prison, saying his actions “left psychological wreckage.”
The QAnon conspiracy theory was born a few months later when an anonymous writer — often signing as Q — elaborated on the discredited myth that a cabal of top Democrats was abusing children. Q purported to be a top official close to President Donald J. Trump and asserted that the president was waging a secret war against the cabal.
Slogans about protecting the children became catchphrases that QAnon adherents used to identify one another, and their bizarre fantasy — initially encouraged by far-right news outlets, then promoted by a ring of social media influencers — appeared to spread widely among Trump supporters. At least two Republican lawmakers elected in 2020 had made statements supportive of QAnon, and prosecutors say that many people involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol subscribed to the theory.
Among those now echoing the Republican allegations about the judicial nominee, in fact, is Ron Watkins, a former website administrator who is widely believed to have played a major role in writing the anonymous Q posts. Mr. Watkins, who has denied any part in the Q messages, is running for the Republican nomination to an Arizona congressional seat, largely on the strength of his QAnon association; this week, he qualified for the ballot.
“Judge Jackson is a pedophile-enabler,” Mr. Watkins wrote Wednesday on social media. “Any senator who votes to confirm her nomination is also a pedophile-enabler.”
QAnon Telegram channels on Wednesday grew increasingly agitated. “She has committed unbelievable crimes against humanity with her judgeship,” one user wrote. “If she gets confirmed the victims remain victims & trapped in the misery bestowed on them,” said another. Some talked of violence.
Polls suggest that QAnon supporters have continued to make up a significant portion of the Republican base even after Mr. Trump’s departure from office contradicted Q’s predictions. One poll last October found that about 60 percent of Trump voters had heard of QAnon, and 3 out of 10 of those Republicans viewed it favorably.
Hawley is the one who first telegraphed that he was going to this dark place in the hearings. Most people dismissed it and when Andrew McCarthy at National Review chastised Hawley for doing it and it was assumed that the Republicans on the committee would stay hands off. It’s disgusting and they know it.
But it turns out they don’t care. Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz and Mike Lee joined Hawley in smearing Brown Jackson in the hearings, giving the QAnon freaks a new focus for their lunacy and ensuring that GOP candidates have a shrill dogwhistle to use against Democrats in the fall: “pedophile-enabler.” It’s as low as it gets. And all the Republicans just sat there and let them do it. They think it will help them win.
These are the people everyone is telling Democrats they must reach out to in order to win elections. The Real Americans don’t like all this “woke” stuff so Democrats must disavow Black Lives Matter and LGBT rights and get behind censoring any teaching of black history or LGBT issues in public schools. They need to accept the fate of incest and rape victims who will soon be required to bear their assaulter’s children. They must allow people to infect them with a deadly disease because they don’t believe in vaccines or masks. And most of all they must be tolerant and understanding of people who call them pedophiles and blood-drinking satanists.
Meanwhile, the GOP establishment is openly appealing to those people and mainstreaming the most disgusting, bullshit conspiracy theories to use against the first Black woman nominated to the Supreme Court. It’s only a matter of time before they start pushing Frazzledrip. (If you haven’t heard of it, click the link. It’s really something.) Clearly, there is no bottom.