Conservative pundit Hugh Hewitt’s piece in WaPo makes me think Hewitt believes he’s on to something – he wants to blame everything on “the left.” But it’s a careful selection of arguments missing their historical context. For example:
But some seem to welcome a slide in that direction. “Tell me again why we shouldn’t confront Republicans where they eat, where they sleep, and where they work until they stop being complicit in the destruction of our democracy,” tweeted Ian Millhiser, justice editor at ThinkProgress.
“Because it is both wrong & supremely dangerous,” replied Georgetown Law professor Randy Barnett. “When one side denies the legitimacy of good faith disagreement over policy — as well as over constitutional principle — the other side will eventually reciprocate. Neither a constitutional republic nor a democracy can survive that.”
And, yet, this was started by the GOP. Can we say Merrick Garland? Sure we can – and remember the Republican refusal to even consider his nomination – followed by Republican vows to keep the late Scalia’s seat open if Clinton had won the Presidency. And, yet, Hewitt would point at the left as starting the culture wars.
Six years of Republican attempts to sabotage President Obama should not be forgotten when the finger pointing begins.
But he has an even bigger whopper he’s trying to slide by the inattentive reader:
Its cause is the retirement of a Supreme Court justice who was appointed by a Republican president, and his imminent replacement by a Supreme Court justice nominated by a Republican president.
And we’ll just stop right there and contemplate the hidden assumption that SCOTUS seats are assigned to political parties. Great idea, eh? Let’s enshrine ideological majorities so they can be run by party donors, no doubt using the latest in judicial joysticks.
The right wing extremists in control of the Republican party wouldn’t countenance any such philosophy if it had been Justice Ginsburg’s, or any of the other left-wing Justices’, death precipitating Obama’s selection of Garland. We’d have seen the exact same dishonorable, institution-destroying maneuvering by Senator McConnell, supported by the exact same lies and distortions about how seats on SCOTUS which open up during the last year of a President are reserved for the next President.
And Scalia died more than a year before the end of Obama’s term. Ahem. McConnell and his fellow extremists don’t know history, nor do they understand how the calendar works. Or … they’re lying.
And then Hewitt condemns himself:
Though Donald Trump is not anyone’s idea of a conventional president, Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh is not only extraordinarily qualified but also a deeply conventional choice.
If so, why not approve Garland, instead? Recommended by Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), he was, by all expert accounts, intellectually impeccable and ideologically middle of the road. If Kavanaugh really is conventional, then let’s put Garland in the seat, instead. Why object, Hewitt?
Unless Kavanaugh’s not all that conventional? Certainly, his ridiculous position on Executive immunity is both unconventional and intellectually flawed. I mean, I’m not even a lawyer and I picked the summary I read of it to little pieces and laughed at it. Rumor has it that he’d like to overturn Roe, another unconventional position – but also unconfirmed.
I also got a charge out of this:
… and the volcano erupts because Kavanaugh — a thoroughly decent man, an obviously good man — was slimed.
It’s not a stretch to suggest we replace Kavanaugh with former Speaker Dennis Hastert and realize the sentence is just as believable, just as plausible.
And then we remember Inmate Dennis Hastert, admitted child sex abuser (convicted on tax fraud, however). We may trust people based on impressions, even long-term associations, but when it comes to a seat on SCOTUS, we fucking verify, as Ronald Reagan said (perhaps I paraphrase a trifle).
And it’s all a pity, because there’s one point Hewitt makes which will require we wait until the mid-terms are concluded, and it’s worth considering:
A vast swath of the public has concluded that the Democrats sat on an explosive charge until the last minute, and they imagine themselves being ambushed that way at work. They don’t want their daughters and sons to live in a society where allegation is conviction.
It’s a good point, primarily because he added daughters to that paragraph – if he’d left it at sons, I’d be laughing at it as well – just like those whimpering idiots who whine about White rights. But, as one of my readers noted, Ford contacted the Administration as soon as she heard about Kavanaugh being on the list.
But that’s not his point, his point is perception, and that means the Democrats need to justify how this process went, and implore the voters to think about the needs of the nation, not the wants of a party which has gone rapidly right over the last two decades.
