{"id":361,"date":"2018-10-05T16:23:00","date_gmt":"2018-10-05T20:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/?p=361"},"modified":"2018-10-05T16:23:00","modified_gmt":"2018-10-05T20:23:00","slug":"brett-kavanaugh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/?p=361","title":{"rendered":"Brett Kavanaugh"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re learning a lot about Republicans and Conservatism watching them push through the Kavanaugh confirmation.\u00a0 The Federalist Society\u00a0<\/a>could give them the names of a hundred other judges with the necessary background to join the US Supreme Court<\/a>and vote to overturn Roe v. Wade<\/a><\/em>, protect corporations from regulation, and permit expansive voter suppression laws.\u00a0 Most of these could at least maintain the appearance of impartiality and show more judicial temperament than Kavanaugh showed.<\/p>\n

Yet they not only press forward, they feel a need do so in the most mean-spirited way possible.\u00a0We\u2019ve come to expect that from Donald Trump, and he hasn\u2019t disappointed the last few days.\u00a0 But until now we could at least try to tell ourselves that senior GOP leaders like Chuck Grassley\u00a0<\/a>and Lindsey Graham\u00a0<\/a>would not sink to such a base level.\u00a0<\/p>\n

These people know that Christine Blasey Ford\u00a0<\/a>came forward out of a genuine desire to help them avoid selecting an Associate Justice of questionable moral character.\u00a0They know this is no left-wing hit job or effort to delay until after the mid-term elections.\u00a0 Blasey-Ford spoke up before Trump nominated Kavanaugh, and had they listened to her at the time could have saved themselves a lot of trouble.\u00a0 Amy Coney Barrett<\/a>, for example, would have pleased evangelicals\u00a0<\/a>and kept up a culture war discussion that would motivate Republican base voters.\u00a0 And having a woman cast the deciding vote to overturn Roe would have at least improved the optics of an obvious effort to control female sexuality.<\/p>\n

Whether or not Diane Feinstein<\/a> mishandled Blasey-Ford\u2019s effort to bring this matter to the attention of her representatives in Congress, the underlying claim is credible.\u00a0 Whether or not others corroborate her story, the underlying claim is credible.\u00a0 She made the claim more than once, years ago, in other contexts.\u00a0 Senators have no reason to disbelieve her.<\/p>\n

Indeed, Kavanaugh\u2019s response itself lends credibility to Blasey-Ford\u2019s account.\u00a0 To be sure, an innocent man falsely accused has a right to be angry.\u00a0 But if he knows for sure he had no part in what happened to Dr. Blasey-Ford he should have no trouble calmly responding to the charges and demanding a full investigation that no-kidding gets at the facts.\u00a0 To see what this looks like take a look at Hillary Clinton\u2019s behavior during 11 hours of hearings<\/a> before the US House Select Committee on Benghazi<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Susan Collins and Joe Manchin just announced yes votes, so at this point it appears that Trump will get his man.\u00a0 \u00a0Republicans will have a victory to celebrate, and the fact that they apparently care more about getting a \u201cwin\u201d and \u201cowning the libs\u201d than placing the best conservative justice they can on the SCOTUS says a lot.<\/p>\n

I have some thoughts on the politics of this that I\u2019ll try to write up tonight or tomorrow.\u00a0 But we haven\u2019t heard the last accusation against Brett Kavanaugh.\u00a0 And if the Republican party wanted to piss off women of all kinds, they could hardly have schemed out a better way.\u00a0 They got the victory the base wanted so badly.\u00a0 I predict it turns out to be a Pyrrhic one<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re learning a lot about Republicans and Conservatism watching them push through the Kavanaugh confirmation.\u00a0 The Federalist Society\u00a0could give them the names of a hundred other judges with the necessary background to join the US Supreme Courtand vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, protect corporations from regulation, and permit expansive voter suppression laws.\u00a0 Most of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[70,84,132,133],"tags":[135,134],"class_list":["post-361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-donald-trump","category-hillary-clinton","category-supreme-court","category-us-senate","tag-us-seante","tag-us-supreme-court"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=361"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":362,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361\/revisions\/362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}