Kavanaugh fight was ugly, but only the start
(Remember when Steve Bannon was declaring McConnell public enemy No. 1 of MAGA Nation?)
Trump cheerleaders could use a reminder of why Kavanaugh was the nominee in the first place. Trump’s Supreme Court list — brimming with GOP legal establishment types, of whom Kavanaugh is the crown prince — was imposed upon him by skeptics who feared he might nominate someone like ... Judge Pirro.
But so much is forgotten, left behind in the locker room as Trump and team celebrate on the field. The president, who deserves conservative praise for picking Kavanaugh off the Federalist Society’s menu and for sticking by him, is claiming and getting undue credit for the win. The fact is, the president — himself repeatedly and credibly accused of sexual misconduct — was largely a hindrance in the fight. And he’s now doing further disservice to the new justice and to the Supreme Court by holding up Kavanaugh like a partisan trophy, as he did Monday at a ceremonial White House swearing-in that verged on becoming a pep rally.
Such gloating and total war is the new statesmanship. Ryan Williams, the president of the Claremont Institute, argues that the Kavanaugh battle retroactively vindicates Michael Anton’s famous “Flight 93” argument of 2016: that the presidential election was a “charge the cockpit or you die” moment for American conservatives. Now, Williams says, the middle has collapsed, the parties are pulling farther apart, and it’s Flight 93 for as far as the eye can see.
The left largely sees the situation this way, too. In the wake of their failure to destroy Kavanaugh, Democrats and liberal activists insist they must “fight dirty,” as political scientist David Farris argues in his book, “It’s Time to Fight Dirty.” Liberals have convinced themselves Democrats lose because they are too nice. This, not ironically, was exactly the view conservatives such as Anton held about the GOP in 2016; many voters rallied to Trump on the grounds that “at least he fights.”
This is how we got here. It will get worse because there are no incentives to be better. It won’t end well either, but at least it will feel familiar.