From Jonathan Bernstein:
Republicans put Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court decades ago despite Anita Hill’s credible claims of sexual harassment, and he is still a Supreme Court justice. Which means that if Republicans confirm Kavanaugh, the highest court in the land will be a living symbol that the law does not treat women as full citizens.
That’s simply unacceptable.
What I’d like Senate Republicans to say: They cannot know whether this accusation is true, false or somewhere in between. They do know such an act would disqualify Kavanaugh from this position and from any high office if were true. Kavanaugh (they believe) was otherwise a perfectly acceptable nominee. But the injustice to the entire nation of confirming him if the claim is true — and the message that confirming him would send if it is — outweighs the injustice to him personally if he has been wronged.
What I’d like Republicans to say:
“We denied the moderate and respectable Merrick Garland (and would have done so for anyone) a hearing 10 months before Obama left office on the grounds that the American people should have a say in the matter via the upcoming election, even though they had already voted for Obama twice. Consequently, a very unpopular and controversial (and, we would add, incompetent) president who is under investigation got his pick instead. We now find ourselves in a similar situation, except the Justice to be replaced was not as conservative as Trump’s new pick and the midterms that will give the American people a say are coming in a mere two months. Since our president is still divisive and under investigation, since he already unfairly got to replace Scalia, since his pick would shift the court politically to some extent, and since the midterms may change everything, we have decided to postpone any hearings until after the midterms. This should demonstrate that we care about our stated principles and the reasoning behind them and seek to follow them consistently.”
Surely it’s not so unreasonable to expect them to adhere to their own principles!
Of course it’s unreasonable! It’s unreasonable to derail them from their chosen talking points. What about the Democrats’ “Unprecedented Obstruction”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2018/06/05/senate-majority-leader-mitch-mcconnell-cancels-most-august-recess/673694002/
I know a lot of the electorate doesn’t really have a good memory for things, but that whole Garland fiasco the Republicans pulled is still fresh in the public zeitgeist. Is there anyone, that’s not suffering from intentional delusion, that actually believes the Democrats, completely powerless in all this, are creating “unprecedented obstruction”?