Right now, the only question in my mind is whether Brett Kavanaugh will withdraw his name from consideration for Justice Anthony Kennedy’s seat on the Supreme Court, or whether Donald Trump will do it for him. Kavanaugh has to go, simply because neither Trump, nor Kavanaugh himself can afford to let the public hearing go forward on Monday morning.
Mitch McConnell tried to warn Trump, although I sincerely doubt that McConnell ever dreamed that a 34 year old allegation of sexual assault would be the thing that took Kavanaugh down. But Donald Trump has spent his entire life bailing out on every stupid decision he ever made, and blaming someone else, and he’ll do the same thing here with Kavanaugh.
The GOP can’t afford to let Monday’s open hearing take place. The GOP is already losing women voters faster than a drunken sailor loses his paycheck on shore leave in Singapore. The GOP Senate Judiciary committee lineup is the same, old, all white lineup they had 27 years ago. Orrin Hatch is just as sexist and rock headed as he was 27 years ago. Chuck Grassley couldn’t run a cub scout meeting. Ted Cruz has the social skills and empathy of Charles Manson. And nobody wants to see Lindsey Graham humiliate himself by evoking the ghost of Merrick Garland again in his lecture about Democrats winning elections if they want to appoint SCOTUS judges.
Kavanaugh can’t be confirmed. Professor Ford will be a sympathetic and compelling witness. She related her story privately 6 years before Kavanaugh was nominated. She passed a polygraph. She will be seen as a heroic figure for voluntarily putting herself through Dante’s seven rings of hell to do the right thing. Kavanaugh’s own high school buddy named Kavanaugh directly as being a black out high school drunk in his memoir. And Kavanaugh’s own past stumbling performance in defending himself against charges of lying to the Senate in his previous confirmation hearing makes it almost impossible for him to convince anybody that he’s telling the truth now.
Kavanaugh gives everybody an out to vote against an unpopular, flawed nominee. He allows the Democrats to stand unified. His inability to prove his innocence will give Collins and Lindsey Graham a viable excuse to ote against him. He’ll give Jeff Flake the courage and cover to sink him in the committee to make a principled statement on the way out the door. He’ll give Lisa Murkowski cover to vote him down on his low esteem for indigenous Alaskans, and it’ll give Tim Scott from South Carolina cover to give him the thumbs down for his less than forthright views on minority based programs. And it allows all of them to do that while trying to shore up their reputations with women voters.
And as much as the GOP can’t afford to let Professor Ford testify next Monday, Brett Kavanaugh can afford it even less. As much as the Kavanaugh’s may try to protect their daughters from the fallout of Ford’s testimony, it can’t be done. Other students will hear their parents talking about Ford’s testimony. And as anyone who has ever gone to school already knows, nobody can e crueler than a child. How does Kavanaugh survive the hurt, questioning looks in his own daughters eyes? And, as much as she’ll want to disbelieve, and maybe she will, Kavanaugh’s wife will almost certainly watch the testimony. She’ll have to, she’ll need to know, for herself. And once she does, what will Brett Kavanaugh see in her eyes? Kavanaugh’s only salvation, for both them and himself, is to stop this before Monday gets here.
Besides, there’s a purely practical reason for the GOP to pull the plug on Kavanaugh. Fear, and self preservation. The GOP as a party runs on fear. And it’s hard for the GOP to drum up fear to get the base out to vote when Trump is telling them that there’s a big red wave on the horizon for November. But, if Kavanaugh goes down, especially if they can paint him as a martyr, they can panic the evangelical base with the thought of losing that seat through Democratic obstruction if they don’t save at least the Senate.
And the GOP is right to be scared shitless. Because a Kavanaugh confirmation, especially before the midterms, ensures a GOP wipeout in November. The evangelicals have withstood Trump’s piggishness for one reason, and one reason only, radicalizing the Supreme Court to the right. The day that Brett Kavanaugh, or any other far right leaning judge is sworn in is the day that the evangelicals drop Trump and the GOP like a cruller with a cockroach in it. The tool that is Trump will have served his limited purpose for the evangelical base, and the evangelicals will feel no loyalty to a Republican party that has so offended their “Christian values” by slavishly trying to remold themselves as “the party of Trump.” evangelicals have seen many a cult come and go, and the cult of Trump will be just one more of them, the evangelicals future will be secure.
So, Brett Kavanaugh has to go. Not only for his own good, but for the good of the party, at least in the short term. And don’t kid yourself, the only thing the Republican party is interested in with all of this is what’s best for the Republican party. The only question left to be answered is who will actually pull the plug.
