What the columnists said
President Trump’s defense of Kavanaugh is entirely based on “male victimhood,” said Jennifer Rubin in The Washington Post. At a rally in Mississippi this week, Trump mocked Blasey Ford’s testimony outright, adding that this is a “very scary time for young men” in America. This isn’t about Kavanaugh anymore. It’s about heeding the “primal scream” of a white, male GOP base that feels its power and prestige slipping away. Kavanaugh’s confirmation fight “has become a trial over masculinity itself,” said Jeet Heer in TheNewRepublic.com. To defend Kavanaugh, Republicans are insisting that reports of his heavy drinking and belligerent behavior in high school and college only show he’s a typical guy, and are blaming the #MeToo movement for demonizing men.
Republicans have a clear choice, said Jim Geraghty in National Review.com. They either confirm Kavanaugh now, or bow in “total capitulation” to the Left’s agenda. Liberals are dying to make a scapegoat of a white male Catholic conservative who belonged to an Ivy League frat and “just might be the deciding vote the next time there’s a legal challenge to Roe v. Wade.” Flake actually did Kavanaugh a favor, said David Marcus in TheFederalist.com. If the FBI comes back with nothing, which seems likely, it will deflate the allegations against him and restore Kavanaugh’s legitimacy as a Supreme Court justice. “That is no small thing.” President Trump is gambling that the Kavanaugh fight “will save his party’s control of Congress,” said in Bloomberg.com. Republicans have been heartened by polls showing that enthusiasm for the midterms has grown 12 percentage points among their voters since July. Trump is convinced that Kavanaugh represents “an untapped cultural undercurrent,” which is why you’re seeing him attacking his accusers outright. That could just as easily backfire, said in TheAtlantic.com. President Trump’s net support among Republican women has dropped by 19 points since the allegations against Kavanaugh. Democrats now have a 28-point advantage among all women voters. Republicans now lead by only 5 points among married, white, college-educated women, a key part of their coalition. “If those numbers hold, they may spell disaster for Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections.”
This fight over this nomination completes the GOP’s transformation into Trump’s party, said Josh Kraushaar in NationalJournal.com. Kavanaugh, a card-carrying member of the Bush-era Republican establishment, embraced Trump’s no-holds-barred partisanship in defending himself. Even anti-Trump conservatives have flocked to defend the judge, seeing it as an existential struggle against left-wing smears. After this nomination fight and the November midterms are over, the political polarization will only get worse. “Voters will be faced with a binary choice heading into 2020: Join the party of Trump or be part of the #Resistance.”