Since the summer of 1987, when Judge Robert Bork was publicly defamed by such Democratic luminaries as Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden, confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court have become increasingly full of sanctimony and cant. Hostile senators ask questions to which there can be no good answer; nominees respond obligingly with anodyne rhetoric and evasion.
Republicans are not blameless in this sad progression, but it is chiefly the result of the Democratic understanding of the judiciary. The court, in that understanding, is a political institution; it is empowered, just as Congress and the presidency are empowered, to deliver policy results. And so Democrats treat seats on the federal judiciary, and especially those on the high court, as a though they were elective offices—positions of power for which they are willing to play dirty.
The unlovely consequences of this outlook are fully upon us. From the moment Judge Brett Kavanaugh was nominated, the preponderance of Democratic senators openly asserted their opposition to him. He was a conservative, and they were against him. Cory Booker and a few others announced their opposition before Kavanaugh was even nominated. Many senators refused even to meet with the nominee before the hearings. Democratic minority leader Chuck Schumer announced that he would “oppose him with everything I’ve got.”
We remember the Bork hearings, in which a distinguished jurist was portrayed as a bigot and a monster; the Clarence Thomas hearings, in which Democrats marshalled sickening and unsubstantiated allegations in an effort to keep a black conservative from the court; and the Samuel Alito hearings, in which Democrats shamelessly tried to impute racism to a wholly decent man. Even so, we were unprepared for the grand spectacle of bad faith and mendacity to which Democrats have subjected Brett Kavanaugh.
Leave aside Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation that Kavanaugh tried to rape her 36 years ago. Leave aside, too, the cynical way in which she was manipulated by her attorneys and Senate Democrats. Her claims include a number of gaps and inconsistencies and utterly lack corroboration. Their truth is ultimately unknowable and, for many Democrats, irrelevant. Their primary interest is lengthening the nomination process. Feinstein and company don’t care if Brett Kavanaugh was a sot in the 1980s, any more than they cared 20 years ago if Bill Clinton was a serial sexual abuser. The point is to stretch the process out—to filibuster without the power to filibuster.
That is why, from the start of Kavanaugh’s nomination, Senate Democrats have made one impossible demand after another. Even before the hearings began, they demanded to see tens of thousands of documents related to Kavanaugh’s time as staff secretary in the George W. Bush White House—as if this classified paperwork were somehow more relevant to Kavanaugh’s qualifications as a judge than his hundreds of publicly available legal opinions. The hearings, Democrats argued, ought to be delayed by weeks in order for them to examine these allegedly crucial documents.
New Jersey’s Cory Booker gave away the game when he complained he’d been denied authority to release some of these documents and did so anyway. It was his “I am Spartacus moment,” he said. In fact he had been cleared to release them the night before, but he didn’t care what the documents revealed and he didn’t want the authority to release them. They were only useful insofar as they occasioned a dramatic demand for more time.
Once the sexual misconduct allegations were leaked to the media, Democrats issued more demands for time. There had to be another hearing, one involving Kavanaugh and his accuser. When Republicans agreed to this request, Democrats made new ones. They urged Ford and her attorneys to make evolving demands on the timing of her testimony in an obvious ploy to lengthen the process.
Before, during, and after the hearing, Senate Democrats insisted that the FBI investigate Ford’s claims. After the investigation was granted, they sent a letter to the FBI and White House counsel Don McGahn demanding that the bureau interview, “at a minimum,” 24 specific people—including people connected to allegations brought by Deborah Ramirez, whose story the New York Times could not corroborate despite exhaustive efforts, and Julie Swetnick, who has since walked back key components of her allegation and gives every appearance of being a fraud.
What’s important, for Democrats, is not that the FBI discovers anything untoward about Brett Kavanaugh. We assume they are smart enough to know that these claims are either unprovable or slanderous. What they care about is holding off a Senate floor vote on Kavanaugh long enough to take back the Senate, and then stonewalling the administration’s judicial nominees for another two years. Ford, Ramirez, and Swetnick are useful tools to achieve that end. Kavanaugh himself is just collateral damage.
The unhappy truth is that Democrats’ specific objections to Kavanaugh were always irrelevant. They were irrelevant because they were asserted in bad faith. Democrats know full well that neither he nor any other nominee can or should detail his views on the merits of Roe v. Wade. They know Kavanaugh cannot and should not say how he’d rule in cases involving an indictment of the president. They don’t care if he drank too much as a teenager. They don’t care what “Devil’s Triangle” or “boofing” refer to. Nor do they believe, as they claim to, that a man who responds emotionally to the suggestion that he’s a serial rapist thereby disqualifies himself from the Supreme Court.
Since July 9, Democrats have cared primarily about one thing: November 6, 2018. Our hope is that voters will not reward their cynicism.
