I’m looking forward to the Friday vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh in the Senate Judiciary Committee, then the overall vote, for which the GOP confidence is growing. Dianne Feinstein isn’t even sure Dr. Ford will show up for the hearing on Thursday, especially as Ford’s team is issuing more demands, this time as to limiting the media covering the hearing. And then there’s this (via Twitchy)
Why haven’t Republicans abandoned Brett Kavanaugh? https://t.co/9rxF8IGvgO
— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) September 26, 2018
From the link
That it has come to this—that a Supreme Court confirmation will hinge on whether a young man in the nineteen-eighties drunkenly degraded women or comported himself as a figure of Catholic chastity—represents a breakdown of the most successful effort of the Trump Administration, the confirmation of conservative judges. The program was simple: Trump chose judges screened by the conservative Federalist Society, the Republican Senate confirmed them, and Fox News supported them. The entire process could take place—as Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation did—within the conservative ecosystem. Democrats could oppose nominees, and the mainstream media could gripe about them, but none of it would matter. “Fake news†is, among other things, a declaration of a boundary that defines which information will and will not matter to Republicans. As late as Monday morning, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was insisting that, despite the accusations against Kavanaugh, the Senate majority would “plow right through.â€
But, as Kavanaugh’s nomination has reached its critical moment, McConnell has not been in control of events. Ford’s allegations, first published in full in the Washington Post, compelled Senator Chuck Grassley, of Iowa, to reopen the hearings. Then the second set of accusations, from Ramirez, helped insure that MacCallum’s interview of the Kavanaughs was a real journalistic endeavor, not soft-focus rehabilitation, and forced Kavanaugh, on the record, to commit to a defense that requires a suspension of disbelief. The credibility of the accusations has compelled the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, all men, to take the extraordinary step of handing over their authority to interrogate Ford to a female prosecutor, whom they so far have not named. This time, Republicans couldn’t seal off the process from pressure.
One obvious question is why the Republicans don’t simply abandon Kavanaugh. There are plenty of other conservative jurists, after all, and McConnell advised Trump against picking him in the first place. The answer may not be complicated. With the midterm elections drawing close, the President under investigation, and the Senate majority dependent on the narrowest of margins, “plow right through†is not a declaration of strength. It is an effort to manage political weakness.
A couple replies
https://twitter.com/MistyACallahan/status/1044770632104316928
https://twitter.com/francoisengelb6/status/1044756083984797696
The beginning of the article makes it clear that much of this really is about Trump Derangement Syndrome, but, if it was Jeb, Cruz, Marco, any Republican in office this would have occurred. And the New Yorker really gives the game away with the headline and article: this whole thing was designed to get Republicans to abandon Kavanaugh. To surrender to the Democratic Party smears, smears that have no actual evidence, no corroboration from witnesses, and no actual facts.
And the New Yorker itself blew out the narrative with their obvious hit job featuring Ms. Ramirez, and it was so bad that even other media outlets took it apart, probably realizing that it Was Not Helping.
Democrats, who claim they are the party of compassion, have attempted to destroy a good man and his family, all for their hardcore politics which would work better in Nazi Germany. Hey, if all sorts of Leftists are cool with trotting out Kavanuagh is Hitler talk, I’ll go with who Progressives really are.
