by Jeffery Rendall
With the confirmation hearings for Trump Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh now concluded talk slowly returns to the hot topic of the hour, the 2018 midterm elections.
But first let’s digest the big glob of goopy phlegm America was forced to swallow last week, served up by shameless Democrats on a mission. In the course of shredding a good man’s reputation the ravenous pack of minority party wolves revealed they weren’t the least bit interested in learning about Kavanaugh’s judicial philosophies, logical reasoning, legal opinions or thought processes. Democrats spared nothing in savaging the Supreme Court as an institution while verbally disrobing and flogging the nominee before a horrified audience – which included his wife and young daughters.
It was a sickening spectacle worthy of bad cinema fiction. If Hollywood produced a film with actors impersonating senators doing the dirty work it wouldn’t have been any more insulting and melodramatic for Kavanaugh himself. One wonders what motivates a respectable person like the judge (or Neil Gorsuch last year) to agree to a guaranteed scourging at the hands of swine in business dress who see it as their sole mission to create histrionics and assault a man’s character.
The hearings did replace the president on the front page for a few days last week, a feat not often accomplished in the era of President Trump. The display Democrats put on during Kavanaugh’s questioning brought the senate’s constitutional duty of “advice and consent” to a new low.
Of course the most egregious of offenders are likely Democrat presidential candidates next year. Watch them turn on each other in similar fashion during the party’s primary campaign – and they say Donald Trump debased American politics? It will be a sight to see. Kamala Harris and Corey Booker will take turns calling each other a racist and bigot. It’ll be hilarious!
In the meantime Democrats were singularly focused on damaging the current president.
David Catron commented at The American Spectator, “When asked if a former president would be immune from being sued or charged with a crime long after leaving office he reiterated, ‘No one has ever said that the president is immune from civil or criminal process. The only question is whether the process should occur while the president is in office.’ The major precedent here is, of course, the Paula Jones civil case against Bill Clinton. But that’s ancient history, and Clinton was a Democrat. His fellow Democrats on the Judicial Committee have a different set of rules for Republicans, and that could not have been clearer than it was during the first two days of the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings.
“The confirmation of a Supreme Court Justice is a serious undertaking. But the Democrats have shown themselves to be utterly irresponsible in the discharge of their constitutional duties in this process. Their frivolous objections to proceeding with the hearings, despicable coordination with protesters whose antics were so disgusting that the nominee had to remove his children from the room, and their lack of real concern for any issue unrelated to removing the President from office reveal that the Democrats are too corrupt to be trusted with real power anytime soon.”
Again, it was shocking to behold. The only question remaining is…will anything come of it?
Everyone knew going in there wasn’t a single vote up for grabs in either direction on the Senate Judiciary Committee panel. All the Democrats — Senators Dianne Feinstein (California), Patrick Leahy (Vermont), Richard Durbin (Illinois), Sheldon Whitehouse (Rhode Island), Amy Klobuchar (Minnesota), Cory Booker (New Jersey), Christopher Coons (Delaware), Richard Blumenthal (Connecticut), Mazie Hirono (Hawaii), and, Kamala Harris (California) – were already surely to vote “no” on Kavanaugh’s nomination.
Meanwhile, all the Republicans — Chuck Grassley (Iowa) Chairman, Orrin Hatch (Utah), Lindsey Graham (South Carolina), John Cornyn (Texas), Mike Lee (Utah), Ted Cruz (Texas), Ben Sasse (Nebraska), Jeff Flake (Arizona), Mike Crapo (Idaho), Thom Tillis (North Carolina) and John Kennedy (Louisiana) – were certain to vote “yes” to confirm Kavanaugh.
Therefore, the “hearing” was essentially just a poorly choreographed politicized square dance providing each senator a few minutes of do-si-do time before the TV cameras to hone their steps and get their names and faces in the news. Name ID is everything to a presidential candidate, right? Ambitious Democrats burned to make the most out of their limited minutes to brutalize the nominee and earn a mention on CNN, MSNBC or major network evening news shows.
The pressure on them must’ve been intense. It’s like pinch-hitting in the world series – you’re either a goat or a hero. Or in the Democrats’ case, a donkey or an ass.
NBC went along with the farce too, claiming Democrats didn’t “learn” anything on Kavanaugh’s first day of questioning. Rebecca Shabad related, “The nominee appeared to say little Wednesday to assuage Democrats’ concerns, particularly about his position on executive power, declining to weigh in on whether a president can be subpoenaed, fire a prosecutor who was investigating him or legally pardon himself, among other questions.”
What stellar reporting! Was there anything Kavanaugh could’ve said that would “assuage” Democrats’ concerns? For argument’s sake what if Kavanaugh toyed with the Dems by providing everything they were after — like YES, a sitting president can be indicted while in office, NO, a president may not pardon himself, YES, Roe v. Wade is etched in stone so it can’t be overturned and NO, Donald Trump cannot get away with anything, including his past sex life.
Would it have helped? Is this what Democrats sought to gain? The truth is Kavanaugh (or any other Trump nominee or appointee) isn’t bound by anything he’s uttered at the witness table in answer to hypothetical questions. Once confirmed to the Court a justice can do pretty much anything he wants for life, short of something so jarring so as to get himself impeached. Kavanaugh could’ve quoted Shakespeare in responding to Democrats’ inane questions if he so chose.
Would Democrats then demand Trump withdraw his nomination for plagiarism?
With no “decision” on Kavanaugh’s nomination to be made by either Republicans or Democrats, what was the point of clogging up senate business for an entire week? While some of the proceedings made good theater – and certainly produced great soundbites for future campaign commercials – what was gained by dragging Kavanaugh’s good name through the filth?
Just like with every other Supreme Court justice, once this is “over” it’s truly over. Will anyone remember anything Kavanaugh said last week? Nope; but they’ll recollect how awful the Democrat senators were to him. It’s just another weapon in the campaign arsenal for Trump and GOP senate candidates this year…should they actually use it.
In the meantime the left isn’t sitting idly by. Could there be a left-wing “tea party” in the works? W. James Antle III wrote last week in the Washington Examiner, “[There] could be a sign something unusual is afoot inside the Democratic Party this year. Women candidates have fared well in the primaries. Liberals have also scored some upsets against the party establishment. The Tea Party arguably started in Massachusetts when Republican Scott Brown claimed Ted Kennedy’s former Senate seat in a 2010 special election — eight years later, are we witnessing a Tea Party of the Left? …
“… [A] lot of the big progressive wins have come in safe Democratic areas. [Boston City Councilor Ayanna] Pressley, an African-American, and [Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez, a Latina, won in majority-minority districts. Tea Party challengers won in some safely Republican areas, such as when Mike Lee toppled Sen. Robert Bennett in Utah in 2010. But they also cost Republicans Senate pickups in blue states like Delaware and even put up weak candidates in more conservative states, such as Missouri and Indiana.
“Another difference with the Tea Party is that establishment Democrats have adapted faster than did their Republican counterparts. They have embraced things like expanding Medicare coverage and abolishing, or at least reforming, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, when facing tough primary challenges.”
Lots to comment on here. Antle makes great points about the distinctions between today’s leftist successes and what took place eight years ago within GOP ranks. But as a bone of contention, those so-called “weak” tea party candidates Antle dissed (from Delaware, Indiana and Missouri) would’ve had at least a fighting chance if the Karl Rove elites hadn’t dismissed them before they even got off the ground (and offered some party financial assistance too).
And yes there are similarities between today’s new socialism-inspired left and the tea parties that sprung up so quickly to battle Obama’s tyranny in 2010. But there are plenty of reasons why conservatives need not fear the coming of a new leftwing “tea party” now — or any year.
One, there’s no mass organized effort on behalf of the left – by appearances it’s just a loose conglomeration of angry activists and hoodlums (paid for by people like George Soros), not exactly a coordinated political movement on a mission. On the other hand, 2010’s conservative tea parties were made up of grassroots enthusiasts who’d been dormant for years, patriots seething with frustration and energy waiting for the right spark to ignite the powder keg. Obamacare provided it.
Two, the leftists have no out-front leadership. Conservative tea parties had both local and national entities providing direction and inspiration. And the left? They’ve got “senile old coot” Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as figureheads. In the latter’s case she can scarcely put two coherent sentences together much less walk and chew gum simultaneously.
Three, conservative tea partiers are/were, for a lack of a better way to put it, smarter and more accomplished than the leftist/anarchist geeks and thugs who just make trouble. The left moves from cause to cause – anti-ICE, occupy Wall Street, kneeling for the national anthem, etc. – whereas conservatives honed in on one thing: liberty. It never changed from week to week or year to year. Consistency counts.
Four, conservatives used the Constitution as a bulwark, typically carrying pocket-sized copies of the historic charter to quote and refer to when challenged by an establishment media stooge. Leftists have what, Medicare for all, gun confiscation and free college tuition for everyone to tout? How can you carry those things to a rally?
Finally, the conservative cause had staying power. Even today there are local chapters of various tea parties that still meet and though they’re not quite as intense and focused as they were in 2010, they still organize and support conservative liberty-oriented candidates and causes. Is the left capable of doing the same?
Conservatives coined the name “tea parties” but they were also known as the 9-12 project, liberty movement and various other monikers which unmistakably identified themselves as conservative and limited government. What could the leftists call themselves, the “free stuff for all” campaign? Further, the leftists’ rallying cry revolves around opposition to President Trump, hardly something that fits nicely on a hat or T-shirt. They simply won’t thrive without a “brand.”
And while the media is squarely in the leftists’ corner it won’t be enough to allow them to maintain momentum for the long run. Last week’s “anonymous” anti-Trump New York Times op-ed is a great example of a movement that lacks direction and substance.
Roger L. Simon wrote at PJ Media, “What the Times is publishing here for its own very temporary convenience is inside propaganda from the hoary ultra-establishment wing of the Republican Party. It is the Deep State in action, though the author claims to represent the ‘steady state.’
“The man or woman who wrote this article is in actuality an abject coward, the kind of tattletale who is afraid to identify himself or herself for fear of losing a government job. How pathetic is that? Why would anyone trust such a person?”
You wouldn’t; that’s why the “mole” is remaining known only to the self-interested editors of the Times and perhaps his or her ideological comrades embedded in the deep state. Simon points out the turncoat’s criticisms center on Trump’s passive attitudes toward Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un (though he/she curiously wasn’t critical of the administration’s Middle East policy).
Common sense says this type of person is found in every administration – or at least in Republican ones. Democrats wouldn’t ever criticize their own (and the media wouldn’t dare publicize a naysayer) – they’re too akin ideologically. Tell-alls in the midst of otherwise smoothly running operations aren’t exactly rare. If indeed this “anonymous senior official” exists he or she isn’t accomplishing anything other than providing Trump another reason to call the media the “enemy of the people.”
Americans aren’t stupid. Good people recognize what’s going on in Washington and the states – a coordinated effort to thwart President Trump, Brett Kavanaugh and those who would Make America Great Again. Now is the time for the conservative grassroots to let itself be heard.
