Toly plickal
Trump says oh gee it’s all so political.
On Monday in New York, President Donald Trump dismissed the second allegation of sexual misconduct against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh as “totally political.”
Meaning what, exactly? That the nomination of Kavanaugh wasn’t political? They can’t be serious. How about Mitch McConnell’s boast about looking Obama in the eyes and saying, with a macho stab of the finger, “you will not fill this Supreme Court vacancy”? That wasn’t political?
The Supreme Court is political. I know it’s supposed to be above that, but it’s not and never has been.
White House counsel Kellyanne Conway said in an interview with CBS on Monday morning that the allegations against Kavanuagh are “starting to feel like a vast left-wing conspiracy.”
And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell went off on Democrats Monday afternoon, accusing them of conducting a “shameful, shameful smear campaign.”
What about the refusal to hold hearings on Merrick Garland? That wasn’t political? That wasn’t a vast right-wing conspiracy?
Chris Cillizza goes back a few years:
But the politicization of this hearing happened a long time ago, and Republmicans are at least as culpable for it as are Democrats.
It began with then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid changing the Senate rules on confirming judges in 2013. It worsened — badly — when Republicans were unwilling to even consider the nomination of Merrick Garland to fill the seat vacated by deceased Justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016. The changing of Senate rules to end debate to confirm Neil Gorsuch to the Court by a simple majority in 2017 further inflamed things. The deeply riven and partisan environment is the one into which Kavanaugh was nominated. And it has only gotten worse.
There’s zero debate that Senate Democrats — particularly those on the Judiciary Committee — bear a massive amount of animosity toward McConnell and the Senate GOP leadership due to the blocking of Garland.
And why wouldn’t they? Why wouldn’t we?
Never mind that the judiciary is dominated by Republican appointees, in spite of the 16 years of Democratic presidencies. Many of Clinton’s nominees to the federal bench were blocked in one way or another; many of Obama’s were. The Republicans want the bench dominated by loyalists who will vote predictably Republican, and they will do what they can to assure that happens.
This dominance of the Republican nominees is in spite of the fact that two of the elections in which Republicans became sitting presidents were cases where the Republican lost the popular vote, but moved into the White House anyway. They have no shame. In the face of not only no mandate but a demonstrated desire for their opponent to win, they go ahead and shove and push and thrust and batter against the things they do not like that support all the people, in order to get their own narrow, aristocratic, autocratic view supported against the tide of public opinion.
I see what you did there. *applause*
Nah, that was only a minor right-wing conspiracy. I mean, there were probably only a half dozen men actually got to make that choice. The fact that all the rest were applauding and wetting themselves with glee is beside the point.
But that would mean the law is political. But it’s supposed to be blind. So that blindfolded lady with the scales of justice in her hand so commonly seen representing any court you like: she would have to be replaced by a blindfolded politician or some similar creature: say a blindfolded snake in the grass, blindfolded weasel, blindfolded fox in a henhouse, blindfolded alligator lurking in a swamp, blindfolded tarantula….
Something appears to have been largely overlooked in the whole ‘it’s political’ claim, and it’s something that I know the Repubs don’t want to be looked at because it exposes the sheer dishonesty of that claim, which means it ought be shouted from the rooftops.
There is no political advantage in blocking Kavanaugh because Trump will simply nominate another just like him. Where’s the gain in blocking one God-fearing, woman-hating, liberal-loathing white Republican male when Trump will have a list of Kavanaugh clones as long as your arm? At best, it delays the Republican tie-up of the Supreme Court gor a week or two -certainly not long enough for the mid-terms to affect the issue, and you can be sure that if Kavanaugh is eventually forced to withdraw, the process from nomination to confirmation of nominee #2 will happen at supersonic speed.
Omar, the salient word in ‘blindfolded lady with scales’ is of course ‘lady”, which means that she can be ignored with impunity. “Why, she don’t represent justice at all. Y’see those scales she’s haulin’? She’s off into the kitchen to practice fer the annual blindfolded pie-makin’ competition. Bitch can make me a sammich while she’s there”.
Acolyte, Trump may have more cards up his sleeve, but Kavanaugh is clearly his ace of trumps: first favourite. Bit of a reputation building up for a pussygrabbin’ hornpoker too. Those two could have a wild time in Washington DC, out on the town of a Saturday night…. Would not surprise me at all to learn that they both hold one belief to be self-evident; that Washington sure needs a bit of livening up, pokin’ up and grabbin’ up..
From what I hear.