It is without fail that anytime a prominent Republican politico disagrees with or otherwise opposes a prominent Democrat minority figure, the race card (and/or the sexism card) will get trotted out as a way to shut that Republican up, shut down the debate, and dishonestly frame the differences in opinion as boiling down to racism or sexism (or trans/homophobia).

We saw it nearly every day during the eight years Barack Obama was president, and also during Hillary Clinton's failed 2016 presidential campaign, and we continue to see it, for example, whenever members of the antisemitic "Squad" act stupidly, which is more often than not, unfortunately.

READ: AOC Picks Fight With Ted Cruz on 'Racist History' of Democrat Party, He Finishes It

On Thursday, we saw it again during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Adeel Abdullah Mangi, who was nominated by Joe Biden in November to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and was then renominated in early January after a contentious round of questioning in December. 

As the Washington Free Beacon reported at the time, Mangi has had some troubling connections to leftist hate groups that Republican Senators on the Judiciary Committee raised questions about in December:

Adeel Abdullah Mangi [...] is an advisory board member of Alliance of Families for Justice. The organization, which works to end "mass incarceration," was formed in 2016 with Weather Underground member Kathy Boudin as a founding director. 

[...]

The Alliance of Families for Justice, where Mangi has served since 2019, organized an event in 2021 to urge the release of six Black Panther and Black Liberation Army members serving life in prison for murdering police officers.

[...]

The Alliance of Families for Justice is not the only radical group on Mangi’s resume. He served until this year on the advisory board for Rutgers Law School’s Center for Race, Security, and Rights, an anti-Israel organization that supports boycotts against Israel and recently blamed Israel’s "settler colonialism" for provoking Hamas terrorists' Oct. 7 attack. The Center hosted an event on the 20th anniversary of 9/11 that featured Sami al-Arian, a former professor convicted of raising money for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group.

During Thursday's hearing, Cruz again brought up some of those issues before the committee. In response, Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) proceeded to play the race card against Cruz, accusing him in so many words of "Islamophobia" and insinuating that Cruz suggested Mangi might be a terrorist because he was a Muslim American.

Cruz absolutely went off on Durbin in an inject-in-my-veins response, stating he had the right to respond considering his character had been impugned and refusing to cede time to anyone else on the committee until he corrected the record not only on his own position but on Durbin's shameful demagoguery as well:

Senator @DickDurbin accused Senator @tedcruz of assuming a Biden nominee is a terrorist because he's Muslim, citing the ADL.

It did NOT go well for him. pic.twitter.com/UhuUwZyhJr

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) January 18, 2024

In my opinion, that should be the standard tone and tenor of any response that comes from a Republican after a Democrat pulls the kind of pathetic woke stunt Durbin did during the hearing. 

They should not back down until they get everyone in the room and perhaps everyone who is watching at home to understand that they have legitimate and relevant arguments against (or for) whatever issue or nominee is being debated. 

Further, they need to be willing to call out in no uncertain terms the insulting, underhanded, race-baiting (or woman-card-playing) tactics used against them by their political opponents and note that those tactics go against the ideal of judging a person based on the content of their character (and actions and policy positions) rather than the color of their skin or their sex.

Democrats have gotten away with this for decades and with a lot of help from their mainstream media allies, but times are changing on that front and we can thank Republicans like Ted Cruz for not shying away from calling it like it is and laying the smackdown when Democrats take the low road because they have no rational arguments to make.

Flashback: Dick Durbin Deflates Left’s ‘Subpoena Clarence Thomas’ Balloon as Ted Cruz Nails What’s Really Going On