Editorial

Supreme Power Play

Senate Republican leaders continued to insist they would put Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court despite mounting stories of his sexual misconduct in high school and college.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told a crowd of conservatives at the Values Voters Summit Sept. 22 in Washington that the Senate was going to “plow right through” on Kavanaugh’s confirmation, dismissing the possibility that Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony about Kavanaugh’s alleged attempt to sexually assault her at a Bethesda, Md., house party in 1982 would derail the nomination.

When McConnell made his proclamation to the cheering crowd, Senate Republican staffers were aware that Deborah Ramirez was also alleging that Kavanaugh sexually abused her during a drunken dorm party at Yale University in the 1983-84 school year. Senate Republicans called to accelerate the timing of the committee vote. After The New Yorker on Sept. 24 reported her account that Kavanaugh thrust his penis in her face at the party, McConnell characterized the allegations against the judge as a “smear campaign” and, with contempt for the rising outrage of women, promised Kavanaugh would get an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor “in the near future.”

Michael Avenatti, the attorney best known for representing Stormy Daniels, also reported he was representing a third woman who had “credible information” about allegations of “gang rape” involving Kavanaugh, his friend Mark Judge and others at house parties in the Washington, D.C. area during the early 1980s.

McConnell has been draining good faith from the Senate since 2009, when, as Senate Republican leader, he led the opposition as Barack Obama became president with Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. McConnell determined to use the filibuster, which required 60 votes to move legislation, to block Obama at every turn as he sought to stimulate the economy and pull it out of the recession that started in the last year of George W. Bush’s administration.

McConnell was adamant that Republicans thwart the Democrat’s plans. Vice President Joe Biden told Michael Grunwald, in The New New Deal, the 2012 book on the making of the economic stimulus, that during the transition seven different Republican senators told Biden that “McConnell had demanded unified resistance” to make sure Obama did not succeed. In October 2010 McConnell admitted to National Journal, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

In 2009, Democrats had a relatively small period of time with a supermajority of 60 votes, as Sen. Ted Kennedy had a seizure during Obama’s inaugural luncheon and he never returned to vote in the Senate. Kennedy died in August 2009 and his seat was temporarily filled by Democrat Paul Kirk on Sept. 24, 2009, which finally gave Democrats 60 votes in the Senate — for all of 14 weeks, through Feb. 4, 2010, when Republican Scott Brown won Kennedy’s seat in a special election.

Under McConnell, Republicans also filibustered Obama’s judicial nominees until then-Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, in 2013 was forced to eliminate the filibuster for presidential appointees and lower-court judges. The number of votes needed for presidential appointees was reduced from 60 to 51 votes, a simple majority, so bipartisanship no longer was needed on those nominations.

When Republicans gained the Senate majority in 2015, McConnell again slowed down consideration of Obama’s nominees for judicial positions. In the most notorious case, after Justice Antonin Scalia’s sudden death in Texas in February 2016, McConnell refused to allow a hearing on Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court vacancy, Merrick Garland, the moderate chief judge of the US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. McConnell even refused to allow Senate votes on 25 of Obama’s judicial nominees who had advanced from the Judiciary Committee with bipartisan support, as the majority leader ran out the clock with the 2016 election approaching.

Senate Republicans kept 103 judicial vacancies unfilled, including the Supreme Court seat, and handed them over to Donald Trump when he was sworn in on Jan. 20, 2017. That was nearly double the 54 openings Obama inherited from George W. Bush. Trump let the far-right Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation draw up lists of reliably right-wing candidates and McConnell removed the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees — which had been the last position requiring bipartisan approval — to speed Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch and other judicial nominees through the Senate. As of Sept. 4, Trump had appointed 26 circuit court judges, with a median age of 49. Obama appointed 55 circuit judges in eight years, with a median age of 53.

So now, with the opportunity to fill a second seat on the Supreme Court, Trump picked Kavanaugh, a partisan who worked for Kenneth Starr on the inquisition of Bill and Hillary Clinton in the late 1990s.

Kavanaugh later worked in George W. Bush’s White House, helping to push partisan judges to confirmation using documents stolen from Democrats, and he later lied under oath about the use of those stolen materials during hearings in 2004 and 2006 when he was up for his seat on the D.C. Court of Appeals.

Perhaps what appealed to Trump in his selection for the Supreme Court was Kavanaugh’s opinion that Republican presidents should not be investigated. That would put a vote on Trump’s side on the Supreme Court in what appears to be the inevitable showdown when Trump tries to shut down Robert Mueller’s investigation. The appearance that Kavanaugh also is a sexual predator just gives Trump something else in common with the purported jurist. But Kavanaugh also carries radical GOP views against healthcare protections, environmental protection, consumer protection, workers’ rights and women’s rights. He is presumed to be a fifth vote to overturn women’s right to abortion, but he also could be the fifth vote to overturn the Affordable Care Act, which would eliminate the mandate that insurance companies cover pre-existing conditions and allow insurers to reinstate limits on “lifetime” coverage, which could make your lifetime a lot shorter if you can’t pay for the difference.

Don’t feel sorry for Kavanaugh having to account for his sexual predations. Remember his recommendation, in a memo to Ken Starr, how President Clinton should be questioned regarding his past sexual behavior: “I have tried hard to bend over backwards and to be fair to him and to think of all reasonable defenses to his pattern of behavior. In the end, I am convinced that there really are none. The idea of going easy on him at the questioning is thus abhorrent to me,” Kavanaugh wrote. “He should be forced to account for all of that and to defend his actions. It may not be our job to impose sanctions on him, but it is our job to make his pattern of revolting behavior clear — piece by painful piece.”

As we go to press, Trump has reiterated his support for Kavanaugh, who is determined to go ahead with the process, no matter how many women come up with accusations against him. Of course, either the White House or Kavanaugh could decide tomorrow to withdraw and let Trump pick another right-wing judge with a cleaner record to make sure they get another “winger” confirmed to the high court before this Congress adjourns in December.

It’s still important to vote Democratic if you are in a state with a contested Senate election Nov. 6. If Democrats flip two seats held by Republicans — and at least four are in play, in Arizona, Nevada, Tennessee and Texas — and if Dems hold onto their incumbents, they will regain the Senate majority, they can shut down the flow of right-wing judges onto federal courts, possibly keep Anthony Kennedy’s old seat open, and block all sorts of damage Republicans hope to do to the Affordable Care Act, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security to pay for the tax cuts they gave to billionaires. — JMC

Editor's Note: The headline on this was changed from "Supreme Embarrassment" after the Sept. 27 Judiciary Committee hearing in which the Republican majority refused to refer to the FBI Christine Blasey Ford's accusation that Kavanaugh tried to rape her, refused to allow witnesses to corroborate Dr. Blasey Ford's account and also refused to hear Deborah Ramirez's and Julie Swetnick's claims to be victims of sexual abuse by Kavanaugh, but instead proceeded to plow on through to approve Kavanaugh's nomination. But Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., forced Senate leaders to ask President Trump to order the FBI to conduct a review of the accusations against Kavanaugh lasting no more than one week, saying he would not vote to approve Kavanaugh without that review.

From The Progressive Populist, October 15, 2018


Populist.com

Blog | Current Issue | Back Issues | Essays | Links

About the Progressive Populist | How to Subscribe | How to Contact Us


Copyright © 2018 The Progressive Populist

PO Box 819, Manchaca TX 78652