WATCH: Sen. Coons Accuses ACB Of Just Being A Female Scalia She Smacks Him Down, ‘I Assure You I Have My Own Mind’

If a male Republican ever dared use this line of argument with a strong female nominee put forward by a Democrat, we would never hear the end of it.

They’s have some PC name for it. Mansplaining, probably.

Or maybe they’d come up with a new, more nefarious sounding term. Merriam Webster might even stealth-edit the dictionary (again) to help them out.

But when Democrat Senator Christopher Coons set up Judge Amy Coney Barrett with this question, she wasn’t putting up with his patronizing swipe at her.

Her response was and every bit as devastating as we would expect a professional woman of her caliber to deliver in her own defense.

He framed the question as implying that sharing the same political philosophy as Scalia might indicate she is a Scalia clone who would walk lockstep with every decision.

Here is her reply:

Well, Senator Coons, to be clear as I said, I think in response to this question yesterday, I do share Justice Scalia’s approach to texts, originalism and textualism.

But in the litany of cases that you’ve just identified, the particular votes that he’s cast are a different question whether I would agree with the way that he applied those principles in particular cases.

And I’ve already said, you know, and I hope you aren’t suggesting that I don’t have my own mind, or that I couldn’t think independently or I would just decide let me see what Justice Scalia has said about this in the past because I assure you I have my own mind.

But everything that he said is not necessarily what I would agree with or what I would do if I were Justice Barrett. That was Justice Scalia. I share his philosophy, but I have never said that I would always reach the same outcome as he did.