Kavanaugh could spur crisis
At a fundamental level, the attempt to jam Brett Kavanaugh onto the Supreme Court closely resembles the way Republicans passed a tax cut last year. Once again we see a rushed, nakedly partisan process, with GOP leaders withholding much of the information that’s supposed to go into congressional deliberations. Once again the outcome is all too likely to rest on pure tribalism: Unless some Republicans develop a very late case of conscience, they will vote along party lines with the full knowledge that they’re abdicating their constitutional duty to provide advice and consent.
True, Kavanaugh is at least getting a hearing, which the tax bill never did. But he’s bobbing and weaving his way through, refusing to answer even straightforward questions, displaying an evasiveness utterly at odds with the probity we used to expect of Supreme Court justices.
No, the real difference from the tax bill story is that last year we were talking only about a couple of trillion dollars. This year we’re talking about the future of the Republic. For a Kavanaugh confirmation will set us up for multiple constitutional crises.
After all, if Kavanaugh is confirmed, we will be trying to navigate a turbulent era in American politics with a Supreme Court in which two seats were effectively stolen. First Republicans refused even to give President Barack Obama’s nominee so much as a hearing; then they will have filled two positions with nominees chosen by a president who lost the popular vote and eked out an Electoral College win only with aid from a hostile foreign power.
Would a Justice Kavanaugh conduct himself with the caution appropriate to such a fraught situation? Well, miracles of personal redemption do happen. But it’s very unlikely. On the contrary, every indication is that if he makes it, he and his fellow justices will abuse their power at every level.
After all, what do we know about Kavanaugh? There’s a lot we don’t know, thanks to the unprecedented way Republicans and the Trump administration are stonewalling on thousands of pages of his records. And what’s in those hidden records must be really damning, given what we already know — a record that would, in normal times, be more than enough to rule him out as a potential member of the nation’s highest court.
Remember, Kavanaugh cut his teeth working for the Starr investigation into Bill Clinton — a