10-06-2018, 04:54 PM
Acer wrote:
Ya know, the brinksmanship here was completely unnecessary. So the opposition found a serious flaw. Whatever. Go back to the list and find another. Life would go on for Kavanaugh, he'll be fine making bank on the white male outrage speaker circuit if he's not on the court. If Conservatism is Received from God then the list of qualified candidates has to be as long as your arm.
But NO. Put up damaged goods, fight to the death. If you lose (Bork), then whine about the injustice for the next three decades. If you win, the reputation of the court is tainted for three decades (Thomas, Kavanaugh). Neither would be the case if you just said, "It's not worth the damage to our government, let's find someone better."
Here! Here!
From the moment Kennedy said he was going to retire, it was obvious that Trump was going to pick a candidate put forward by the Federalist Society - a candidate that would please both rich people and social conservatives (the two primary power centers for Republicans). That was nearly inevitably going to happen. Trump picked a rotten egg of a candidate. When it became apparent that Kavanaugh was a rotten egg, Trump could have easily ditched him and picked another white guy off the Federalist list that wasn't such an ethical stinker, got that person confirmed and ended up with that person voting on Supreme Court cases pretty much like Kavanaugh would have (keep rich people and social conservatives happy).
But NO (as you say), they decided that turning this into a partisan competition was more important than keeping a relatively character deficient person off the court.