More at HotAir. And this is a good point: “John Roberts is culpable in the Kavanaugh attacks. He showed you could rough up the ref and change the call.”
John Roberts has been a huge disappointment.
[Update a while later]
The assault on the Supreme Court. I’d like to ask, if at long last, the Left has no decency, but the answer to that is pretty clear at this point.
[Update a while later]
OK, they’re not all stupid. Senior Democrats shut down the “impeach Kavanaugh” talk.
[Mid-morning update]
Kevin Drum: The new book on Kavanaugh is a gift to conservatives. I disagree on a lot of things with Kevin, but I’ve always respected his honesty.
[Update a few more minutes later]
The real reason for the Kavanaugh smear.
It’s all about delegitimizing any of his rulings.
So… Kavanaugh was involved in the Clinton impeachent, and Hilary Clinton was involved in the Nixon impeachement hearings, and… Kavanaugh was vegeance for Clinton, and Clinton was vengeance for Nixon, and Nixon was vengeance for… what? Jerry Voorhis? Maybe one day historians will find out two boys had a fistfight in 1879, with one winding up with a humiliating bloody nose, starting a resonance leading from that day to this, and onward to the Fall of the West…
“It’s all about delegitimizing any of his rulings.”
Mostly about that. But there are two other serious objectives:
1) Cow Kavanaugh into voting the way they want
2) Warn any RGB replacement that he or she will go through a WORSE wringer than Kavanaugh and that wringer will never ever end. This way good people will not step up.
“This way good people will not step up”
Yes, this is one possibility.
The other is that someone who is sick and tired of all this crap and passionately wants to change this situation steps up, takes the media bashing, and actually fights back.
My take is that there isn’t one motive, there are several.
#1, to create an excuse for court-packing, like FDR tried, in order to install a total leftist majority. The left has already begun floating this option.
#2, as others have mentioned, to deter non-leftist judges from accepting nominations. Already, any judge with even the tiniest imperfection in their distant past knows it’ll be hauled out to destroy them. Busted for being in possession of alcohol when 19? You are finished, forever.
#3, further instill the dynamic that only the ideologically pure (radical leftists) are acceptable, for anything, ever. These are terror tactics, and there’s precedent for it; National Socialists are just one example.
Kavanaugh isn’t the first. Remember Clarence Thomas? Remember Robert Bork? There are a long list of victims of Democrat smear campaigns.
I also remember that nut who ran for the Senate, to replace Jeff Sessions, Roy Moore. He was destroyed by allegations, one of which was a proven fraud (the “signed” yearbook turned out to be fabricated) and I now strongly suspect that the other allegations were fake, too, because Democrats were involved.
Moore was the test-run to see how far they could go with fake accusations. And because people fell for it, we get this.
To be fair, these types of attacks go back to the dawn of man. Accusations like this even played a role when Jackson ran President. Considering its long history, especially when used by Democrats, you’d think the media wouldnt fall for it but that requires a media that aren’t party propagandists.
“OK, they’re not all stupid. Senior Democrats shut down the “impeach Kavanaugh” talk.”
Except that they are not shutting down the talk because the accusations are unfounded and there is zero evidence that Kav did anything wrong.
They are shutting it down partly because it’s political suicide and partly because if an impeachment trial WAS held a lot of bad stuff about the Democrats would come out.
There’s no nobility in the move.
I didn’t say there was anything noble about it.
I didn’t say that you did.
Drum adds: “Just for the record, I maintain my original position that all of these stories are most likely true. Kavanaugh could have simply acknowledged them, apologized, and said he led a wild life for a few years as a teenager. That probably would have made it a two-day story.” Yeah, sure. “Just sign the confession and we’ll go easy on you.”