Post-Kavanaugh Predictions
By Matthew Continetti
October 5, 2018 11:44 AM
The judicial wars are just getting started.
When President George W. Bush nominated John Roberts for the Supreme Court in 2005, the judge was confirmed by a vote of 78–22. Half of the Democrats voted with all of the Republicans in a display of bipartisan advice and consent. It was a touching moment of comity and civility — the sort of thing lauded in the abstract by Washington elites at the recent funeral of John McCain. It didn’t last six months.
Early in 2006, Samuel Alito was confirmed by a vote of 58–42. When the next Republican president made his first Supreme Court pick in 2017, Neil Gorsuch was confirmed by a vote of 54 to 45. As I write, the maximum number of votes Brett Kavanaugh can receive is 52 (all of the Senate Republicans plus Joe Manchin). That would put him in a tie with Clarence Thomas, who received the lowest support for a justice of the Supreme Court in postwar history. It is possible Kavanaugh could set a new record.
Why the narrowing margin? Not because W. and Donald Trump nominated unqualified candidates. With the exception of Harriet Miers, withdrawn before a hearing was convened, their nominees have been eminently qualified. Nor is it entirely because of scandal. True, Anita Hill may have put a ceiling on Thomas’s support. But Kavanaugh was on his way to a narrow confirmation even without the last-minute uncorroborated accusation from Christine Blasey Ford.
The reason for these increasingly hard-fought and closely decided Supreme Court battles is that the last four nominees have been originalists and textualists who threaten the progressive doctrine of the Living Constitution. The Left’s hold over the Supreme Court is under threat. The Democratic party and its affiliated interest groups, always eager to appease foreign adversaries, have in this case responded with force. They understand that the Supreme Court effectively rules the country. Any restoration of constitutionalism and of the separation of powers depends on control of the Court.
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/10/brett-kavanaugh-supreme-court-future/
