The Midterms after Kavanaugh
Senate hearings are rarely "must-see TV" for this kid. Such hearings are often tedious and can serve as an excuse for senators to showboat in their bids for the presidency. The moral preening of some senators can be downright nauseating.
Even so, I did happen to catch Senator Sasse's opening remarks in the Judicial Committee's hearing on Judge Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to Scotus. But that's only because it coincided with lunch, when I tune into Fox Business to see how the Nasdaq's doing. Real Americans will find Sasse's observations about the proper role of the judiciary and the nature of Congress quite edifying. I highly recommend that you click and listen. America needs more senators like Sasse.
Content to let others watch Senate hearings so I don't have to, I know that if there are any "I am Spartacus moments" that the media will excise them out for me. The highlights and blooper reels are enough for me. Given all that, the advent of the mysterious Christine Blasey Ford, doctor of psychology no less, was too much and I resolved to watch her testimony. And that I did: the whole hearing.
Having tuned in to Fox News to hear Blasey Ford tell her story in real time to the whole world, I will say this: she may be an extraordinarily "fragile" person. Or perhaps she's just a good actress. Ford claimed to be "terrified," but her testimony was not credible. If she really were terrified, she could have stayed home. Yet, she came to D.C. intent on ruining a man's career, and her only evidence was nothing more than hearsay.
Perhaps Ford is telling the truth; perhaps she's lying. No one knows. It's easy to wonder whether even Ford knows. But if Ford's testimony isn't true, then she has very conveniently fabricated a story that cannot be falsified. However, some of what Ford has said has been found false. If she said those things under oath, then she should be prosecuted to the fullest extent. (J.R. Dunn recently wrote about Ford's "inconsistencies" for American Thinker.)
Anyone who lied under oath in this confirmation process must go through the very justice system they were seeking to subvert. The system demands this for its own credibility and hygiene, and that includes Ms. Ford, the left's new Joan of Arc.
What struck me about the ceremonial swearing-in on Monday night was how gracious President Trump was; he thanked everybody, and by name. He's a class act, that Trump. And the moving ceremony was a much-needed blessing after such an ugly, underhanded attempt to malign and smear a good man.
Republican voters need to understand that Kavanaugh's ascension to the high court isn't enough. Five conservatives on the Court aren't enough. Any retirement, illness, or death in the five conservative justices would knock the Court right back to being evenly split.
If Democrats take control of the Senate and we lose a conservative justice, President Trump, despite having nominated two terrific conservative justices, might be tempted to do a "deal" with the Democrats and nominate a Merrick Garland-type judge. That may not be likely, but it's possible. The temptation to have a third justice might be too powerful, even for Trump.
But if Trump stood firm and didn't nominate some progressive that the Dems would accept, we'd have a "hung Court" and get no finality, no precedent, on the more contentious issues that come before SCOTUS. We saw this after the death of Justice Scalia with 4-4 deadlocks on public unions and immigration cases. And with 4-4 deadlocks (split decisions) on the Supreme Court, the decisions that prevail are those of the lower courts that were appealed.
It would seem that The Notorious R.B.G., who will turn 86 next March, would be the next justice to depart the high court. But you never know; she could hang on for years. Ginsburg may be the most progressive of the justices, but she was confirmed by a vote of 96-3. Today's Democrats have probably made such lopsided confirmation votes a thing of the past.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has performed magnificently in ushering through the president's conservative nominees to the federal bench. And Republican senators are finally getting some grit. It would be shameful to reward them by allowing angry mobs to determine the makeup of the next Senate.
Conservatives therefore cannot rest on the Kavanaugh confirmation; they need to vote in November so we can keep the Senate in the hands of Republicans and be ready for a sixth conservative nomination, and maybe even more. You see, there's no requirement to share the Court with justices who "legislate from the bench."
Americans need as many constitutionalists and originalists on the Court as we can get. And consider this: Democrats are already talking about impeaching our newest justice, and there's even talk of packing the Court with two more seats. Of course, such strategies have little chance of success. The Democrats' real aim is to gum up the works, get us chasing our tails, and halt the Trump agenda.
Decent Americans need to go to the polls to "lock in" their recent victories. They need to crush the Democrats in November so that the Democrat party will be forced to reform itself into something decent and American.
To that end, President Trump should promise voters that his next pick for the Scotus will be at least as conservative as Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. And the president should also promise this: that his next nomination to the Court will be a woman.
The president bypassed several great gals for Kavanaugh, but now their time has come. President Trump has been terrific in following through on his campaign promises; he tells us what he wants to do and then he does it. Promising to put a conservative woman on the highest court in the land is one way to perhaps break the midterm curse for the party in power and stir up a "red wave."
Jon N. Hall of ULTRACON OPINION is a programmer from Kansas City.