His formal nomination is not even three hours old, but we can already predict one stupid question Judge Brett Kavanaugh will field from Democrats during his confirmation hearing.
In fact, a week before President Trump even announced Kavanaugh as his pick, Robert Costa of the Washington Post reported that opposition sources were busy drawing attention to a perceivably germane passage in David Brock’s 2002 book Blinded by the Right. Recalling a 1997 State of the Union watch party at Laura Ingraham’s house, Brock claimed he saw Kavanaugh mouth the word “bitch” when a camera panned to then-first lady Hillary Clinton.
Damning.
Brock famously converted from anti-Clinton to pro-Clinton over the course of the 1990s, and has subsequently formed the liberal watchdog group Media Matters along with the Democratic super PAC American Bridge. A 2014 profile in The Nation described Brock as a “conservative journalistic assassin turned progressive empire-builder.”
Here’s what this amounts to: a 16-year-old book written by a pro-Clinton operative with an axe to grind (who also happens to be a professional opposition researcher) claiming in passing that Kavanaugh mouthed the word “bitch” when her image flashed on screen at a party more than two decades ago.
Even if the story is true, and we assume Brock is a proficient lip reader, Kavanaugh’s 21-year-old word choice is hardly disqualifying — though in retrospect it may seem unbecoming of a Supreme Court nominee.
But with the stakes this high, the question is not if the anecdote will be broached during Kavanaugh’s hearing but which Democratic senator will have the honor of asking the question. Especially in the context of resurgent (if over-hyped) concerns about Roe v. Wade, the Left will be eager to cast Kavanaugh as a sexist no matter what level of Olympic athleticism those stretches require.
With a Republican majority in the Senate (slim as it may be) and a host of vulnerable red-state incumbents on the ballot this fall, Democrats have little recourse to halt Kavanaugh’s nomination. Their best best is probably trying to find success digging up dirt, which means we can expect to see more where this came from.
Opponents of Kavanaugh now have decades of public life to scrape through with a fine-tooth comb — and the efforts to that end seem to have already yielded a result, dubious as it may be.
