Right-wing neoconservative nutboy Eliot Cohen gets this one right, I think. The reasons to get Kavanaugh on SCOTUS were (1) to demonstrate that the Republican Party rewarded being a Tea Party-Unfederalist apparatchik, and so (2) strengthen the Tea Party-Unfederalist social network. Those are not in the interest of anyone not already high up in that social network. Opposed are that (a) Kavanaugh is not near the top of those likely to be most effective as a conservative justice because he is not a first-rank persuasive intellect, (b) Kavanaugh is not near the top of those likely to be most effective as a conservative justice because he is mean and uncollegial, (c) Kavanaugh is not near the top of those likely to be most effective as a conservative justice because he does not have a judicial temperament, (d) Kavanaugh is not near the top of those likely to be most effective as a conservative justice because he too obviously lacks judicial principles, and (e) you take electoral damage from pushing him through. It is a mystery why he has not been withdrawn yet—especially with the July 1 entry on his calendar. Eliot Cohen focuses on (c): Eliot Cohen: The Republican Party Abandons Conservatism: "But if we expect steely resolve from a police officer confronting a knife-wielding assailant... we should expect stoic self-control and calm from a conservative judge, even if his heart is being eaten out.... The conservative virtues remain real virtues, the conservative insights real insights, and the conservative temperament an indispensable internal gyro keeping a country stable and sane...
...I have concluded that the break between conservative beliefs and the party that claimed to uphold them is complete and irreversible. Being a conservative has always meant, to me, taking a certain view of human nature, and embracing a certain set of values and virtues. The conservative is warier than her liberal counterpart about the darker impulses and desires that lurk in men and women, more doubtful of their perfectibility, skeptical of and opposed to the engineering of individual souls, and more inclined to celebrate freedom moderated by law, custom, education and culture. She knows that power tends to corrupt, and likes to see it checked and divided. Words like responsibility, stoicism, self-control, frugality, fidelity, decorum, honor, character, independence, and integrity appeal to most decent people....
The GOP threw frugality and fiscal responsibility away long ago, initially in the Reagan years, but now on a stunning scale involving trillion-dollar deficits as far as can be forecast. It abandoned most of its beliefs in fidelity and character when it embraced a liar, cheat, and philanderer as its nominee and then as president. But something else snapped this week.... Brett Kavanaugh’s judicial philosophy... was... pretty standard conservative fare, save for one tell-tale element: his ascription of very high levels of immunity and discretion to the executive. In this respect what passes today for conservativism is anything but....
Genuine conservatives... would, out of regard for the truth, tried to figure out exactly what happened to Ford 35 years ago, and whether the character of the man before them was what it was said to be. Perhaps the collapse of modern conservatism came out most clearly in Kavanaugh’s own testimony—its self-pity, its hysteria, its conjuring up of conspiracies, its vindictiveness. He and his family had no doubt suffered agonies. But if we expect steely resolve from a police officer confronting a knife-wielding assailant, or disciplined courage from a firefighter rushing into a burning house, we should expect stoic self-control and calm from a conservative judge, even if his heart is being eaten out. No one watching those proceedings could imagine that a Democrat standing before this judge’s bench in the future would get a fair hearing. This was not the conservative temperament on display. It was, rather, personalized grievance politics...
#shouldread
