An Early Kavanaugh Retrospective

Some summaries of the Kavanaugh fiasco:

First, Charen:

"It began as farce. Protesters dressed in "The Handmaid's Tale" red capes lined the halls of senate office buildings. Senator Kamala Harris behaved like a heckler at her own committee's hearing. Senator Cory Booker invited martyrdom by claiming to break a rule that he didn't actually violate. The Democratic senators demanded documents that might have passed over Kavanaugh's desk in the Bush administration despite the fact that they had already announced their intention to vote against him. (Senators Amy Klobuchar and Chris Coons clearly didn't get the memo and conducted themselves as if they were actually seeking insight into Kavanaugh's views of the judiciary.) 
Then it descended into tragedy. Senator Dianne Feinstein, at the 11th hour, announced that she had referred an anonymous accusation to the FBI. She had been in possession of the information since July but held it. As Gregg Nunziata, former chief nominations counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee outlined in The Weekly Standard, such accusations are common. Procedures are in place to investigate them confidentially, sometimes involving the FBI, sometimes not. But this one was treated as an ace in the hole. Its existence was strategically leaked when it could do the maximum damage.
After someone on the committee leaked Christine Blasey Ford's identity, the real show trial — the one conducted in the media — got rolling. Story after story appeared about women and girls who'd been attacked or abused and kept silent. The Atlantic ran a piece by Caitlin Flanagan subtitled, "When I was in high school, I faced my own Brett Kavanaugh." Prejudicial, you think?

The New Yorker account of an incident at Yale seemed not so much reported as extracted with forceps. Deborah Ramirez's memory of the alleged event was so hazy that she consulted classmates about whether they recalled it, and took six days to think over whether it was Kavanaugh or someone else. The Julie Swetnick story of rape trains seems literally incredible.

Dozens of retrospectives of the Anita Hill hearings have been lovingly presented, with agonized commentary suggesting that if Kavanaugh is confirmed it will be a verdict on whether our nation has changed since the 1990s. Left-leaning outlets basically decreed Kavanaugh guilty due to his skin color and background. USA Today said "prep school elites take care of their own." Salon fumed about "class, social capital, and endless privilege," and Vox filled us in on how elite schools "enable toxic masculinity.""

 

Next, on Bork:
On July 1, 1987, just 45 minutes after Ronald Reagan announced his nomination of Robert H. Bork to the Supreme Court, Ted Kennedy said in the Senate that Bork’s confirmation would mean that “women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, and schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government.”

He is talking here about Robert Bork, one of the most respected jurist in the land, just 288 days after he and 97 other senators voted 98-0 to confirm Antonin Scalia, Bork’s intellectual soulmate. As if Teddy could sit in judgment of anybody.

 

And this is Dana Bash of CNN asking Harry Reid about the calumny he uttered on the Senate floor during the Obama-Romney election about Romney not paying his taxes:

Dana Bash: So, no regrets, about Mitt Romney, about the Koch brothers? Because some people have even called it McCarthy-ite.

Harry Reid: Well, they can call it whatever they want. Romney didn't win, did he?

This is the face we Americans now present to the world, the America of the Constitution, the Civil War, the first and second great wars. The America of Jefferson, Adams and Lincoln.
The Court debate is wrapped in a sort of righteousness, as if the people involved were interested in quality. They are not. They are interested solely in influence and the first, second and tertiary ways of achieving it. Their interest in your opinions is only an entre to how they can attract your support. So women demonstrating in red outfits mimicking the style of a sci-fi novel unifies some peripheral group. Haranguing the candidate for the subtle meanings of  the notations in a high school yearbook galvanizes some equally poorly thinking subset. It is the nadir of influencing, worthy of Crazy Eddie and eleven p.m. infomercials. And these are our leaders, and they want that Justice seat. Both sides are willing to burn down the building to control the space.