The name didn’t matter
All one really needed to know was that protesters at the Supreme Court last week had three different professionally made signs, one for each of three finalists chosen by President Donald Trump. When the announcement was made that Brett Kavanaugh was chosen, the correct signs were dutifully distributed and the fake outrage began for the TV cameras.
Secondarily, the #Me Too Movement sent out a press release protesting the nomination of a Supreme Court nominee, and didn’t wait to press the button sending the release to its email list. Instead, and “XX” was used to “fill in the blank.” But, the press release decried the nomination for all the usual reasons, so well-known we do not have to rehearse them here.
And, the usual suspects in the mainstream media began the hoped-for “Borking” of Kavanaugh, putting reporters on his case, looking for anything – anything – that can be used against him. The Washington Post, which is still riding the coattails of Watergate, found that Kavanaugh likes his beer (Budweiser) and maxed out his credit card to buy Washington Nationals season tickets for himself and friends. And, he paid off the credit card! Meanwhile, the venerable abortion provider Planned Parenthood decided to get its oars in the water by declaring Kavanaugh to be a “frat boy” and making fun of his first name.
The leftwing playbook, used so many times in so many campaigns and appointments, came out again. The candidate/appointment is “racist,” “sexist,” “homophobic,” “Islamo-phobic,” “will bring us back to the 1950s,” or “slavery will be brought back.” The list goes on and on. Armageddon is just around the corner.
Since it first “borked” Robert Bork in 1987, the left has used the playbook to great success over the last three decades, painting its enemies with a broad brush, and getting traction from the MSM, which shares its philosophy. But, finally, the playbook is showing age, dog-ears and missing pages.
The public is getting tone deaf to the outrage. For the last 18 months, the volume of outrage on anything and everything has been off the charts. The ranting has become more and more extreme and the public is not buying it. Despite its best efforts, the MSM, and reliable leftwing outlets like the Daily Beast, CNN and MSNBC are being seen as so over the top as to not be believed. If everyone who disagrees with them is a racist, homophobe, sexist then everyone is. That doesn’t play.
What is at stake for the left is its use of the courts to do what it could not do in the legislative halls of government. Since the Warren Court of the 1950s, the left has used the judiciary not to interpret law, but to legislate from the bench. Whenever the political process failed, the courts were the place the left could reliably go to force its agenda.
Roe v. Wade was the motherlode of judicial tyranny, using verbal sleights of hand and logical handstands to create a right that is nowhere enumerated in the Constitution. Even the most Progressive pundits realize the 1973 decision is cut from whole cloth, and is based on very shaky legal ground.
The selection of Kavanaugh might bring with it the first reliably conservative court in four generations. Not since the early days of the FDR administration was the court conservative. In fact, the realization has so upset Progressives, they are now mainstreaming the idea of upping the number of justices when they someday reassume power and pack it with like-minded jurists; thus, they would ensure a liberal bent on the court.
And here is what liberals are afraid will happen: Decisions such as Roe v. Wade will be struck down and the “right to an abortion” will revert where it always should have been – with the states. That puts it back where it belongs – in the legislative realm.
This terrifies Progressives. It is much harder to change society by the vehicles provided in the Constitution. It’s easier to go court shopping and find a judge that agrees with your position.
The courts over the last 80 years have become not a check on the other branches of government, but a super branch, trumping the will of the states, Congress and the Executive. Putting originalists and Constitutionalists on the court will reverse this legislation from the bench, and put the courts back in the job for which they were intended.
That is why the outrage – manufactured or otherwise – is now being heard.