Tommy Tuberville: Doug Jones does disservice to Alabamians with his opposition to Judge Amy Coney Barrett
By Coach Tommy Tuberville My father, Charles, served in the U.S. Army, so I often heard the joke about the young recruit who was participating in his first military parade, looked around at his fellow soldiers, and smugly thought, “I’m the only one who’s marching in step.” That story sums up the way that Doug Jones has approached his job in Washington. Rather than representing the conservative beliefs and values of the millions of Alabamians he swore an oath to serve, Jones has, instead, voted the liberal, left-wing convictions that make up his core. As the hearings for Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court begin, Jones has once again turned his back on his constituents and pledged to vote against her confirmation. Jones would not even extend the traditional courtesy of meeting with Judge Barrett and letting her outline her judicial philosophy. When it comes to giving fair consideration to President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Doug Jones is a lost ball in high cotton. But that comes as no surprise. Jones voted against the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh and said he would have opposed Neil Gorsuch if he had been in the Senate at the time. Democrat Doug even voted twice to remove Donald J. Trump from office. Since becoming our placeholder senator, Doug Jones has opposed everything most Alabamians support and supported everything most Alabamians oppose. While liberal jurists manufacture law from the bench based upon the trending cultural touchstones of the day, Judge Barrett understands that her job is to interpret the Constitution as our founding father’s intended – a doctrine known as “Originalism” that she learned while clerking for Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative icon who passed away far too soon. Her confirmation to the court will open the door to overturning the abomination known as Roe v. Wade, a decision that has no foundation in constitutional principles and invented from thin air a right to abortion that appears nowhere in our nation’s governing document. Judge Barrett’s record also indicates that she stands ready to protect our Second Amendment gun rights, preserve religious freedoms, shield conservative speech from the liberals who wish to silence it, and defend the basic liberties that make our nation the envy of freedom-loving people across the globe. Several liberal legal scholars who know Judge Barrett, her abilities, and her temperament have publicly supported her confirmation to the court despite their opposition to her conservative views and philosophy. They stand willing to put the good of the court and the needs of their country ahead of their own political beliefs. Yet Doug Jones refuses to even consider Judge Barrett. Despite the fact that he was elected to represent the deepest red of the nation’s Republican states, Jones has allied himself with fringe liberals like Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Ilhan Omar. During President Trump’s last State of the Union Address, Jones joined the most liberal elements in Congress and sat on his hands throughout the speech, even when a Tuskegee Airman was promoted to Brigadier General and a veteran from Montgomery, Alabama was honored before the international audience. Unwilling to limit the false, negative attacks from his Senate campaign to my candidacy, Jones has spent thousands of dollars airing television ads that dishonestly accuse President Trump of disrespecting military veterans, a group that every Alabamian knows our commander-in-chief holds in the highest esteem. And despite the fact that Donald Trump carried Alabama with 62% of the vote in 2016, every action taken by Jones has indicated he believes that Hillary Clinton won the state. Perhaps it is the influence of the Hollywood and New York donors that funnel millions into his campaign war chest, or maybe it is his own deeply liberal philosophy that causes Doug Jones to demonstrate such disdain toward Alabama’s traditional values and tightly-woven moral fabric. Doug Jones’s refusal to represent their desires of Alabamians and support the confirmation of Judge Barrett to the high court tells you all you need to know about how he views us. Like the young recruit I mentioned at the beginning of this column, Jones thinks we are the ones who are out of step while he awkwardly marches forward to his own liberal cadence. On November 3, Alabamians have the opportunity to correct that mistake. Tommy Tuberville is a retired football coach. He lives in Auburn with his wife and is running against Democrat Doug Jones for U.S. Senate.
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