Kavanaugh
1 genuine witch hunt that consumed seven years and tens of millions of dollars without finding any evidence of wrongdoing. And he personally spent years obsessively pursuing crazy conspiracy theories about the suicide of Vince Foster.
Then he spent time working in the George W. Bush White House, which made torture a routine part of policy. In his 2006 confirmation hearing for an appellate court judgeship he declared that he played no role in those decisions. Was he telling the truth? The answer might lie in those thousands of pages of records the Trump administration is refusing to release.
Strange to say, however, he emerged from that experience as someone who believes that presidents can’t be subject to legal investigations.
Meanwhile, Kavanaugh accumulated a record as an appellate judge — one that places him far to the right on everything from the environment, to labor rights, to discrimination. His anti-labor views are especially extreme, even for a conservative.
So who is Brett Kavanaugh? If he looks like a right-wing apparatchik and quacks like a right-wing apparatchik, he’s almost surely a right-wing apparatchik. Which brings us to the coming constitutional crises.
The immediate question is how the court will handle Donald Trump’s obstruction of justice, which is likely to reach epic levels very soon. If you think Kavanaugh wouldn’t completely support Trump, I have some miracle dietary supplements you might want to buy.
Beyond that, what will happen if we eventually get a Democratic Congress and president, who try to move forward with a center-left agenda? What I mean by that, by the way, are things like expanding health coverage and raising taxes on high incomes — things that aren’t radical, and in fact have broad popular support.
There’s every reason to believe that a court including Kavanaugh would strike down everything elected officials tried to do. Policy substance aside, this would destroy the court’s legitimacy, making its naked partisanship — based, again, on two stolen seats — clear to all. But it would probably happen anyway.
In fact, the constitutional carnage might well begin as soon as next year. We know that if Republicans hold on in the midterms they’ll quickly move to destroy Obamacare and take insurance away from millions. But even if they lose, what are the odds that if Kavanaugh is confirmed, the court will find some excuse to declare the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional? Surely they’re pretty high.
So let me make a last-minute appeal to Republican senators who care about America’s future, if there are any left: Don’t do this. A vote for Kavanaugh will be a vote to destroy the legitimacy of one of the last federal institutions standing.