Rodney Dangerfield once made this cynical quip about hockey fights: “I went to a fight the other night, and a hockey game broke out.”

A similar thing happened at last week’s Senate confirmation for Amy Coney Barrett when Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse avoided asking the judge any questions but instead spent his time focusing on a Republican plot to put conservative judges on the nation’s courts.

His tirade centered on “dark money,” a term describing funds given to social welfare nonprofits which do not have to reveal their donors. Those groups can use their funds to influence a campaign but are not allowed to coordinate their efforts with a candidate.

During his 27-minute rant, Whitehouse used multiple diagrams to charge a network of “polluters” and blaming the Federalist Society, the Judicial Crisis Network and the National Organization for Marriage for pushing to elect originalist judges and justices for funding “orchestrated amicus flotillas” to get judges to change the law in their interests. Whitehouse also tied issues like abortion and health care to large donations to conservative judicial groups and statements from Republicans about judicial nominations.

After the Whitehouse lecture about “forces outside of this room who are pulling strings and pushing sticks and causing the public - puppet theater to react,” conservatives punched back. FOX business contributor Dagen McDowell called the senator a “hypocrite” and a “sexist,” stating that he could not go after Amy Coney Barrett because of her accomplishments, because of her intellect, because of how she’s lived her life, so he implied that she’s a pawn of dark money.

At the hearing, Sen. Ted Cruz effectively destroyed the Whitehouse rant, pointing out “massive differentials” between liberal and conservative spending. Of the top 20 super PACs, he said, 14 give mostly to Democrats, only three mostly to Republicans, and that the GOP was being outspent $422 million to $189 million.

The gap is also reflective in the presidential sweepstakes. Democrat Joe Biden may tout himself as being the candidate who will protect middle class workers from big and powerful corporate interests, but the majority of big and powerful interests are shoveling more cash into Biden’s campaign.

Last month it was reported that the securities and investment industry was sending nearly five times as much cash ($51.1 million) to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden than to the Trump campaign. Biden’s extensive list of billionaire donors include left-wing political activists like George Soros and numerous Big Tech moguls such as Facebook investor Sean Parker and Twitter co-founder Ev Williams.

Biden’s running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, has also been harvesting donations from billionaire donors in Silicon Valley and Hollywood.

Conservatives see Whitehouse himself as a leading actor in his own dark-money theater. Wall Street Journal editorials have linked a number of top campaign donors or suspected top donors to Whitehouse and asked to disclose his ties to Arabella Advisors, the Sixteen Thirty Fund, and Demand Justice. These groups have funded court-related organizations such as the Alliance for Justice and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, both of which have spent huge amounts to keep Barrett off the high court.

During last week’s hearing, Whitehouse also took aim at Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, a group of conservatives and libertarians interested in the current state of the legal order. It is founded on the principles that the state exists to preserve freedom, that the separation of governmental powers is central to our Constitution, and that it is emphatically the province and duty of the judiciary to say what the law is, not what it should be.

Of the nine members of the Supreme Court of the United States, five - Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Samuel Alito - are current or former members of the organization.

These distinguished jurists - as well as Barrett - are “textualist” judges who interpret the laws as written, as opposed to twisting them to favor a popular or preconceived opinion.

Liberal Democrats like to avoid subjects involving individual liberty, traditional values and the rule of law. That’s why they will try anything to deflect attention from an accomplished candidate like Barrett by leading people on “dark money” rabbit trails.

Thankfully, Cruz was ready for the Whitehouse deflection tactic and flipped the charges right back to the Rhode Island senator and his billionaire friends.

By Jim Zbick | tneditor@tnonline.com