This morning’s committee vote to push Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination through to the full Senate served as a fitting anti-climax to yesterday’s blockbuster hearings. The Common Wisdom on the Republican rush job on Kavanaugh is that they want to boost enthusiasm among the base, but I think that’s a cover story. The most enlightening part of yesterday’s drama was Kavanaugh’s repeated refusal to call for an investigation to clear his name. The rest was details. He’s guilty, he knows it and so does the GOP. They picked him because, not despite, his past performance as a partisan hatchet man who would loyally follow orders. That’s clearly what he did in his performance piece yesterday afternoon, reading a script probably dictated to him by Trump (especially that “revenge for the Clintons” part). Brett Kavanaugh is exactly what the GOP elite running the country want — a guy with all the right paper credentials who’ll do exactly what they tell him to, and will even go beyond his charge in his eagerness to please. He is, almost literally, a dog — a smart one, but a dog.
Another item pointing to Kavanaugh’s guilt is spelled out here by Josh Marshall: Kavanaugh’s old calendar seems to include evidence that might corroborate Christine Blasey Ford’s story, and is at the very least a starting point for investigators, if any would be named.
Of course, the view from the right was that Kavanaugh’s show of vitriol cleared his name, because apparently only a Perry Mason-style confession on the witness stand would convince them otherwise. This version, by Daily Beast house conservative Matt Lewis, is typical in thrust and was the least obnoxious RWNJ take I could find.
The reaction was less positive from groups like the American Bar Association, which called for an FBI investigation (as did Trump-backing Alan Dershowitz) and the Catholic magazine that retracted its endorsement.
Whatever other longterm effects the hearings have, let’s hope they put to bed the biggest lie nominees for SCOTUS seats tell in their confirmation hearings: That judges are non-partisan. Many have noted that such a highly partisan attack on Democrats should disqualify a candidate from the court, but all he actually did was say out loud what everybody knows is true — judges are as partisan as any other players in the political arena.