Sen. Ted Cruz on Monday pointed out that Senate Democrats were engaging  in “political rhetoric” about President Donald Trump and other Republicans instead of discussing Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s actual qualifications during her Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing. They were not discussing her credentials, he said, because they are “impeccable.”

“Let me observe, as Sherlock Holmes famously observed, that ‘what speaks the loudest is the dog that didn’t bark.’ Which is, to date, of every Democrat who’s spoken, we’ve heard virtually not a single word about Judge Barrett,” Cruz said.

The American Bar Association, he added, “which typically leans hard left and has a long pattern of favoring Democratic nominees over nominees appointed by Republican presidents, had no choice” but to give Barrett its highest rating.

When it comes to the timing of the hearing, he said, “The framers of the Constitution deliberately set up a system of checks and balances so that nobody could become a Supreme Court nominee without both the president and the Senate. Each was designed to check the other. That system of checks and balances limits power ultimately and protects the voters. And indeed, the voters made a clear choice.”

Democrats and Republicans demonstrated how they have “fundamentally different visions of the court, of what the Supreme Court is supposed to do, what its function is,” he added.

“Democratic senators view the court as a super-legislature, as a policymaking body, as a body that will decree outcomes to the American people,” Cruz explained. “Now, that vision of the court is something found nowhere in the Constitution. And it’s a curious way to want to run a country. Even if on any particular policy issue you might happen to agree with wherever a majority of the court is on any given day, who in their right mind would want the United States of America ruled by five unelected lawyers wearing black robes?”

“It’s hard to think of a less democratic notion than unelected philosopher-kings with life tenure decreeing rules for 330 million Americans,” he added. “That is not in fact the court’s job. The court’s job is to decide cases according to the law and to leave policymaking to the elected legislatures.”