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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe GOP May One Day Regret Brett Kavanaugh
The GOP May One Day Regret Brett Kavanaugh
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/09/kavanaugh-ramirez-new-allegation.html
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The winners do not see it that way. Mired in what they wrongly imagine to be yet another unfavorable news cyclecycles that the president seems invulnerable tothey believe this bad news will age out. Kavanaughs confirmation will be one more outrage for snowflake libs to get over. But this myopia cannot obscure the bigger story of how this action has affected a republic whose institutions were already crumbling. Merrick Garlands nomination may not have faded in our national memory, but Kavanaughs will blaze.
That the GOP has embarked on a nihilist project is unsurprising. Neither is the fundamentally undemocratic nature of that project, in which the political victories that buoy the Republican Party perpetuate the power of a minority over a majority. (More Americans last year believed Kavanaugh should not have been confirmed.) Trumpist Republicans made a choice long ago to operate as if Americans as a whole do not matter. Thats a perfectly straightforward strategy. But if youve noticed some Republicans wondering (usually trollishly) why libs cant take defeat when they lost fair and squareor drawing false equivalences to Robert Borks hearing, which culminated in six Republicans voting against himthe extent to which theyve hollowed out the fair and square part is not incidental. Theyll advise letting the anger go while crowing about revenge (for Obama, for Borks loss) and relishing the fact that Blasey Fords father is now alleged to have congratulated Kavanaughs father on the confirmation. They do not find the ever-widening divisions distressing.
The question is: Does that matter? Only if you care about the integrity of American institutions. Its clear now that a large portion of Americans will never find Kavanaughs confirmation legitimate. This was not an inevitable result of partisan polarization. Neal Gorsuch encountered none of these issues. Clarence Thomas did go through a contentious hearing and abbreviated FBI investigation, but at least there are arguments that make that painful episode open to some mitigation. The public wasnt that familiar with sexual harassment yet (Thomas still had the majority support of the country even after the hearing), it was a different time, etc. But a quarter century later, especially with the Thomas hearings as precedent, there is nothing to excuse what Republicans did for Kavanaugh. They could have easily confirmed someone else without Kavanaughs baggage and temperament. Instead, they turned it into proof of their power. The GOP actually tried to steer Trump away from Kavanaugh at first. But once the nomination was made, the party refused to admit his flaws and went all in.
It did so knowing, of course, that there is effectively no recourse to a lifelong appointment. It didnt matter to the partys assessment of his fitness that more than 2,400 law professors signed a letter objecting to Kavanaughs confirmation. The 83 ethics complaints filed against Kavanaugh have been dismissed for reasons that may remind you of Muellers reasons for not indicting Trumpits not that they had no merit, but that the complaints could not be pursued after he was confirmed. The man had ascended too high to be subject to any discipline or review. As the American Bar Association put it, the 10th Circuits judicial council ruled in December that it had no jurisdiction because the federal law governing judicial misconduct complaints does not apply to U.S. Supreme Court justices. An effort to impeach Kavanaugh would be so fraught that Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor have very professionally professed their liking of him, in an effort to preserve the integrity of the institution. Democratic candidates Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Julián Castro have called for Kavanaughs impeachment, but Democratic Whip Dick Durbin said, Get real. An illegitimate confirmation backed by a sham investigation must be treated as if it were legitimate. If all that matters is partisan scorekeeping, then the so-called victors will look at this and think this somehow burnishes the victory.
But this will not pass. This is only the first of many anniversaries when Americans will revisit this awful episode, and every time we will be struck anew by the modern GOPs turpitude, the hearings brevity, the abridged investigation, and the corrosive permanence of the effects. A party hell-bent on winning triumphed this round, but it has no idea whats coming if an institution that most Americans no longer respect tries to move the law in an unpopular directionlike banning abortion. Despite this countrys revolutionary past, Americans have temperamentally been law-abiding institutionalists. That can change. Granted, it would take an enormous amount of bad faith to construct a government so unrepresentative and unworthy of trust that working around a Supreme Court decision with civil disobedience would come to seem not just thinkable but necessary.
Republicans made a certain calculus when they confirmed Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court: victory at any price. The GOP has celebrated the victory. It has not yet understood the price.
Johnny2X2X
(19,066 posts)Dems will replace him if we get the Senate and the White House.
lapfog_1
(29,204 posts)while I will hope for this...but reality is this is very unlikely
Johnny2X2X
(19,066 posts)Republicans would find a way to expel him, constitution be damned.
lapfog_1
(29,204 posts)Oh wait, RBG is still on the court... and was when the repukes had the House, the Senate, and the Presidency (not needed).
So why didn't they just go an arrest her or whatever it is when you UNCONSTITUTIONALLY remove a federal judge?
stopdiggin
(11,306 posts)there's a brand of thought going around ...
Polybius
(15,413 posts)2/3rds vote in the House and Senate, and 3/4th of all states.
world wide wally
(21,743 posts)Trump has completely conned GOP voters by granting their most extreme wishes to further prop up his base. He is a man whose only core is knowing how to "play" to the most conservative voters. Ultimately his deal is to give them whatever they want in exchange for being allowed to make all the money he can make from his position of power.
Wounded Bear
(58,654 posts)It's about decades of Repub gaslighting, obstruction, and recreating reality.
Repubs have been spiralling down to Trump's level for many years.
world wide wally
(21,743 posts)dalton99a
(81,486 posts)maxsolomon
(33,345 posts)and I'm 55.
Proud Liberal Dem
(24,412 posts)Hopefully, sooner rather than later