How did other conservatives besides Charlie Kirk view Justice Jackson's nomination?
Executive summary
Conservative reaction to Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court nomination was uneven: a hardline, ideologically driven rejection from many Republican leaders and conservative media coexisted with measured respect from a handful of Senate conservatives and even some conservative legal commentators who praised the quality of her opinions. The dispute centered less on basic credentials than on narrative frames—Jackson as a “soft-on-crime” public defender and culture-war target versus Jackson as a careful, precedent-tethered jurist whose record many critics nonetheless found professionally sound [1] [2] [3].
1. Republicans in the Senate: a split between performative opposition and pragmatic assent
Several Senate conservatives played to partisan audiences with sharp criticisms—Sen. Lindsey Graham suggested the “radical Left” had prevailed in the choice [4]—and Sen. Ted Cruz staged theatrics during hearings that made cultural-war themes central to Republican attack lines [5]. Yet not all Republicans joined the show: Utah’s Mike Lee conducted a respectful constitutional exchange with Jackson, and two Republican senators—Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski—ultimately announced they would vote to confirm, arguing the process and Jackson’s qualifications warranted bipartisan assent [5] [6]. That split illustrates the dual incentives at play for conservative senators: score political points for a base audience or preserve institutional norms and claim the high ground on judicial vetting [5] [6].
2. Conservative media and legal commentary: systematic opposition with pockets of substantive critique
Conservative outlets like National Review urged broad opposition to the nomination on ideological grounds, framing Jackson as the kind of judge conservatives should resist [2]. Many Republican talking points targeted Jackson’s work as a public defender and certain sentencing decisions, portraying her as insufficiently tough on crime—a critique repeated in mainstream reporting and used by some senators during hearings [1]. At the same time, policy-focused conservative analysis noted a different tone: scholars reviewing her opinions sometimes concluded that her reasoning was high-quality and did not plainly justify wholesale disqualification, a point highlighted in a Brookings assessment noting that even some of Jackson’s “most conservative critics appreciated their quality” [3].
3. Messaging strategies: culture-war playbooks and procedural grievance
A number of conservatives folded Jackson’s nomination into broader narratives about court-packing, ideological balance, and accusations of hypocrisy—pointing to President Biden’s pledge to nominate the first Black woman while invoking past positions such as his 2005 comments about Janice Rogers Brown—as a way to delegitimize the selection [7]. Others framed their resistance as a defense of a neutral role for judges, with Sen. Marsha Blackburn saying she could not support a nominee whom she believed would “take up arms in a culture war” rather than interpret law [8]. These messaging lines mixed principled-sounding constitutional concerns with partisan culture-war signaling deployed during confirmation hearings [8] [9].
4. Tactics used against Jackson: focus on public-defender work and Guantanamo clients
A recurring conservative tactic was to highlight Jackson’s background representing criminal defendants and, controversially, her role in cases involving Guantanamo detainees—portrayed by critics as evidence she was “soft on crime” or sympathetic to terrorists—an argument surfaced in multiple outlets and Senate questioning [1]. That line of attack fit a longer conservative playbook that contrasts prosecutorial pedigrees with public-defense experience and uses specific client matters to suggest broader jurisprudential biases, even when such attacks bypass the specifics of judicial opinion-writing [1] [5].
5. Outcome and the conservative consensus (or lack of one)
Ultimately the conservative reaction did not cohere into a unanimous front: several high-profile Republicans opposed and performed theatrically; conservative media and think tanks largely called for opposition; yet some conservative senators and analysts acquitted her of disqualifying flaws, producing a fractured conservative coalition and contributing to a 53–47 confirmation that included bipartisan votes [6] [10]. Reporting indicates that the split was as much about strategic posture and political theater as about a unified legal judgment on Jackson’s fitness for the Court [5] [3].