Now that Christine Ford has come forward, there’s a real human face on the Kavanaugh attempted rape allegation. In my view this changes everything.
No doubt McConnell’s first inclination will be to just push forward. That’s what he’s done each time he’s faced such a choice and perhaps it’s what he’ll do. If so, the price just got bigger. Probably a lot bigger.
Trump has focused a lot of outrage against policies that predate him and cut deeper than his presence. He just makes what’s been going on for many years impossible to ignore. The group most outraged of all has been woman.
Without a reasonable share of female voters, Republicans cannot win. Once middle aged and elderly women turn on them, they’re done. If young women are motivated to turn out in numbers, they’re done. And there’s no way to pin a Kavanaugh confirmation on Trump. The whole party takes the bullet.
I’m honestly not sure what they’ll do. On the one hand, this is their big chance to tilt the court so far to the crazy-right, we may never recover. On the other hand, the outrage it will engender could destroy their party for a generation or more. Might be smarter to pull back, make the case that he’s being unfairly targeted by crazy liberals and use it to generate turnout of their base voters (apt pun not unintentional).
McConnell’s more than smart enough to see the choice. In a way it’s not unlike the Democratic Party’s decision to push forward with the ACA after Scott Brown’s election in Massachussettes. It was predictable that our voters would be fat and happy while their’s would be stoked. Numerous representatives took enormously courageous votes, sacrificing their political futures to coalesce a significant advance in the law.
Republicans are now faced with a similar choice, the difference being that our party was driving by idealism whereas theirs is driven mostly by greed. But the mechanics are similar. Take the big gain now and hope you don’t get so overwhelmed that it can be rolled back versus slip away and hope to fight another day.
I think our party did the right thing by passing the ACA and deal with the consequences but, frankly, I think they’re screwed either way. Unlike the ACA, which is fundamentally a good thing and thus hard to undo, a radical right Supreme Court will generate a lot of push-back. Rolling back modernity by taking on Roe or Griswold will engender rage. At the same time, old people are dying off and the country continues to diversify ethnically, leaving Republicans a limited window in which to push their authoritarian agenda. Keeping it going will require true authoritarian choices which will need the support of a radical court.
Very high stakes choices! Interesting times!
