Soon after Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination for the Supreme Court, Democrat Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced total war on Kavanaugh. That war would not just be procedural, it would be personal:
Schumer chose to fight the nomination aggressively. On the night of the nomination, his office released a statement saying that he would “oppose Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination with everything I have, and I hope a bipartisan majority will do the same. The stakes are simply too high for anything less.” In addition, it has been reported that Schumer is cautioning fellow Democrats that they will face a uproar from their base if they do not fight the nomination. According to this report, Schumer has instructed his caucus to focus on criticizing Kavanaugh specifically rather than raising procedural objections. Schumer’s own statement, which asserts that Kavanaugh’s record indicates that he “would rule against reproductive rights and freedoms, and that he would welcome challenges to the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act,” reflects this strategy. [Emphasis added]
Everything that has played out since then reflects this total personal war on Kavanaugh. There were weeks of Democrat claims that Kavanaugh being elevated to the Supreme Court would kill millions of people and enslave minorities and women.
Democrats brought protesters into the hearing room to scream at Kavanaugh. His childrten had to be escorted out of the room.
Democrat Senators were unseemly in how they conducted themselves.
Senator Kamala Harris circulated a dishonestly edited video of Kavanaugh’s testimony as to contraceptives. Senator Cory Booker performed for the cameras, declaring himself to be Spartacus. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse talked over Kavanaugh and then trotted out large posters portraying the “dark money” backing Kavanaugh’s nomination. Senator Patrick Leahy falsely suggested Kavanaugh perjured himself at his 2006 confirmation hearing, and again at these hearings. That false claim of perjury was amplified throughout anti-Trump social media.
The confirmation hearings were a low point in a low political environment. And those were the good ol’ days compared to what has happened since then. Senator Dianne Feinstein knew that a woman had sent a letter claiming the Kavanaugh assaulted her in high school, but Feinstein said nothing. Not during the hearings, not during her consultations with fellow Senators, not during her private interview with Kavanaugh.
Instead, after the confirmation hearings were closed and a committee vote ready, it was conveniently leaked to The Intercept and Buzzfeed that the letter existed, and that Feinstein had forwarded it to the FBI. Days later the accuser was revealed in a Washington Post interview and story to be Christine Blasey Ford.
In the subsequent week, the personal attacks on Kavanaugh have escalated.
He is being portrayed regularly as a rapist and sexual predator, students at Harvard (where he teaches a winter course) and professors at his alma mater Yale Law School have demanded investigations into his relationship with the school. Sheldon Whitehouse has promised congressional investigations if Democrats regain control of either house of Congress, and others are promising attempts to impeach Kavanaugh either from his present Appeals Court position or his Supreme Court position.
In other words, Democrats have declared total war on Brett Kavanaugh the person.
Ford has repeatedly delayed her testimony and has assembled a team of advisors who are veterans of wars against prior Republican nominees and the Trump administration. It was a strategy to buy more days in which to ramp up the attacks on Kavanaugh, to find new claims to try to derail the nomination.
Stormy Daniels’ lawyer Michael Avenatti is claiming there will be more claims coming.
As of this writing it appears Ford and Kavanaugh will testify on Thursday, September 27, though the format is not yet clear. That means a committee vote probably will not be had until the following Monday, and a Senate floor vote until later that week. There is almost no possibility that Kavanaugh would be confirmed in time to sit with the other Justices at the first oral argument day of the term on October 1. His absence, even if for a short time, will be a public relations victory for the Resistance.
This is what Democrat total war looks like.
Democrats can get away with it because of a supportive media, and a small number of weak links in the Republican majority in the Senate. Chuck Grassley and Mitch McConnell don’t have to worry about Democrats half as much as they have to worry about Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Jeff Flake, and to a lesser extent, Bob Corker.
The total war on Kavanaugh is why so many Trump voters voters wanted someone who would fight, as Jonathan Tobin noted at National Review, Has the Kavanaugh Battle Vindicated Trump Voters?
The willingness of the Democrats and their mainstream-media allies to use a solitary, unsubstantiated, 36-year-old allegation to turn Judge Brett Kavanaugh into a Me Too villain whose guilt of a heinous crime is to be assumed despite the lack of proof or a semblance of due process has shocked his friends and supporters. But it has also vindicated the Trump approach to politics. After the public assassination of Kavanaugh’s character over the last week, there can’t be many left in the GOP who will still dispute former Breitbart CEO Steve Bannon’s assertion that politics is warfare and Trump is thus justified in anything he does to combat his opponents….
Right now the value of Trump to the Trump voter is he is all that stands between them and the people who hate them every bit as much as they hate Trump.
This is not about Brett Kavanaugh. Democrats would have waged total personal war on any Trump nominee.
The answer is to get out and vote. Get your friends and relatives out to vote. Vote not just to defeat the Democrats, but to free us from the grip of 2-3 weak Republican Senators.
If Republicans had 53-54 Senators, the Kavanaugh personal war would have ended already with confirmation.
As readers may recall, I’m a big fan of Phil Ochs. One of my favorite songs is There But For Fortune.
There but for fortune, go you or go I — you and I.
Senate Republicans better fight and win this confirmation battle. It’s not just about Brett Kavanaugh.
It’s about all of us who are subjected to personal wars by Democrats and #TheResistance in the workplace, campus and social media. And about those among us who keep their heads down and mouths shut so as not to be targeted.