Somebody – probably a Republican – may have to restrain U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ).

The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to advance a committee-deadlocked Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson as the history-making African American judge advances toward squeaking out the requisite number of votes in the full senate to occupy a seat on the highest court in the land.

Along the way, Booker used his platform at today’s hearing to decry off the rails rhetoric – by both sides, but in this case specifically by Republicans – to derail people in ugly fashion, and joked that he may have to up the intensity level on his affection for his rivals if they keep hurling mud.

“I have not resigned myself to the inevitability of this being where the U.S. Senate is going,” said New Jersey’s junior senator. “This is a frustrating experience. We do real damage when we so vilify each other that we create a caricature.”

He included himself in his assessment of the Senate, noting how he once used the word “evil” to publicly describe another human being.

But for the most part he tried to stand on his sunny record, recounting his horror over watching  “My governor [then-Republican Governor Chris Christie], my friend… running. [Then-Democratic President Baraka] Obama gave my governor a hug. This was used in campaign commercials. He [Christie] dropped over ten points, because [Obama] was so vilified, so demonized [that a received hug was seen] as such a violation of [tribal affiliation].”

Then Booker joked that he has half a mind to spoil the presidential campaigns of ambitious rival Republicans by hugging them.

On a serious note, he decried the “absurdity” of GOP “vilification” of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, as “the Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to vote on party lines — 11-11 — barring any unforeseen circumstances, but there are ways, in which, the panel or the Senate Democrats in power can still put her nomination to a confirmation vote in the days to come. If confirmed, Jackson will be the first Black woman to be a Supreme Court justice.”

“Judge Jackson is not an extremist,” said Booker, hitting back against one of his GOP colleagues in particular.

From The New Republic:

The most recent hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson featured a notable uninvited guest: QAnon, the baroque conspiracy-mongering movement that slouched forth from the depths of the internet during the Trump era. A central tenet of the movement is the idea that powerful American elites are all involved in a massive child trafficking ring.

“In particular, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley was bent on making hay out of the sentences handed down by Jackson in child pornography cases, which he insinuated were suspiciously weak. The QAnon connection in this line of inquiry did not go unnoticed by observers. Its adherents took heed: NPR reported that a ‘steady drumbeat of amplification’ followed hard on the heels of Hawley’s pandering, on various internet platforms popular with the far right.”

Booker protested.

“To say she’s an extremist on crime – she has law enforcement group after law enforcement group supporting her,” he said. “All 22 of us find abhorrent sexual crimes,” but senator on the other side of the aisle during the hearing have sought, by demonizing the judge, to “glorify themselves.”

“Meritless on the verge of demagoguery,” said Booker. “The way we talk about each other is so disrespectful. The way we talk about each other – the rhetoric is so far out of the lines from what independent groups, more qualified, are saying.

“We are going to have our political substantive disagreements,” the senator added. “But some question triggered a hurt in so many people I know. How can these create these caricatures, these exaggerations? How qualified do you have to be, working at all levels of the federal judiciary and three times confirmed by the senate in a bipartisan way?”

Booker honored the judge with his favorite quote from the works of the mate Maya Angelou, lines he has loved going back to his first run for mayor of the city of Newark 20 years ago:

“You may try to write me down in history

“with your bitter, twisted lies;

“you may trod may down in the very dirt

“but still, like dust, I rise.”