Occasionally, his votes or some news story will renew the bitter sense among many Americans that he got away with a lie in denying Christine Blasey Ford’s and Debbie Ramirez’s allegations of sexual misconduct, as well as a third such accusation, from his Yale years, that Senate Republicans all but bottled up.Earlier this summer, reports said the Justice Department had confirmed that, in 2018, the FBI received more than 4,500 tips against Kavanaugh and sent “relevant” ones to the Trump White House, where they disappeared. This month, Kavanaugh joined the 5-to-4 ruling allowing a Texas antiabortion bounty-hunting law to take effect, though it plainly violates court precedents upholding a constitutional right to abortion. To many, that provided further evidence — along with his previous support for a Louisiana antiabortion law — that he’d bamboozled Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who provided the linchpin vote for his confirmation after he assured her that he respected those precedents as “settled law.”The hearing record signaled that Kavanaugh was a Republican with an ax to grind long before his televised tirade in 2018 dismissing the misconduct allegations as a Democratic “political hit” — payback for Donald Trump’s election and Kavanaugh’s role in Ken Starr’s Javert-like pursuit of the Clintons.He warned us then: “What goes around comes around.”Even before Kavanaugh arrived to solidify their ranks, the Supreme Court’s conservatives generally took the Republican Party’s side in political cases. They allowed unlimited corporate spending on elections and ended federal “preclearance” of voting changes in states with histories of discrimination. With Kavanaugh’s decisive assist in 2019, they ruled 5-to-4 that federal courts were powerless to block partisan gerrymandering. Throughout 2020, he and other conservative justices generally stuck together — and with Republicans — in opposing state rules making it easier and safer to vote amid the pandemic; Trump openly complained that such changes would doom Republicans by increasing Democrats’ turnout. In one case, Kavanaugh echoed Trump’s criticism of counting mail-in ballots that arrived after Election Day.
The WaPo article goes on to assert that of the six Republican Christian nationalists (CN) justices on the Supreme Court, only four (Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett) are conservative ideologues. That is nonsense. All six are radical CN ideologues, not conservative ideologues. These people are far beyond simple conservatism. CN majorities have overturned some precedents to get radical outcomes regardless of the consequences.
Kavanaugh, along with Chief Justice Roberts tend to be more deceptive about their political agendas. Roberts’s incrementalism appears to be an attempt to show the court is nonpartisan while moving inexorably into deep radicalism. WaPo asserts that Kavanaugh’s caution appears to be that of a former partisan, who wants to minimize blowback against his FRP (facsist Republican Party). Those two probably do not want to see jarring headlines like “COURT OVERTURNS ROE!” They can get to their fascist ends in small-appearing and thus less-obvious increments. The recent shadow docket decision to allow a clearly unconstitutional Texas anti-abortion law to stand is an example of this incrementalism.
The WaPo article argues that the Republican “six-pack’s” record “makes a mockery of recent protestations from Barrett and Democratic appointee Stephen Breyer that the justices really are apolitical.” Barrett’s assertion of being non-political came at a recent purely political event with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. McConnell’s role in ramming Barrett onto the bench was about as blatantly partisan and political as it can get. She is the product of politics and her political acceptability was necessary for her to be nominated in the first place.
The article points out that Kavanaugh was in both the conservative legal movement and in FRP politics. After law school, he spent nearly four years with Ken Starr investigating Bill and Hillary Clinton, which started off looking at financial matters. Finding nothing there, it metastasized in a search for something else. The FRP witch hunt led to Monica Lewinsky and Clinton’s impeachment. In private practice, Kavanaugh joined in politically charged legal disputes, including Bush v. Gore. His partisan legal politics got him jobs in George W. Bush’s White House as a counsel and then staff secretary and then a nomination him for the D.C. appeals court. the WaPo comments: “Midway through his 12-year tenure, a Washington Post columnist wrote that Kavanaugh was ‘nothing more than a partisan shock trooper in a black robe.’” That sounds about right. A vengeful partisan shock trooper.
Questions: Is it fair to criticize Kananaugh and the other FRP justices on the Supreme Court as radicals that have moved beyond conservatism? Or, (i) has the Overton Window[1] moved so far to the right that CN radicalism is now the standard for conservatism, or (ii) the FRP CNs are just standard, old-fashioned conservatives, but the Overton Window has moved so far to the left that some people see the judges as radical right CNs? Or, has the FRP and CN movement passed from what used to be called radical to what used to be unthinkable (see image below)?
Footnote:
1. Wikipedia on the Overton Window (OT):
The Overton window is the range of policies politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time. It is also known as the window of discourse. .... an idea's political viability depends mainly on whether it falls within this range, rather than on politicians' individual preferences. According to Overton, the window frames the range of policies that a politician can recommend without appearing too extreme to gain or keep public office given the climate of public opinion at that time.
The point of the FRP’s and CN’s divisive, crude radical right rhetoric and norm-busting behavior is to push the OT to the far right, making far right radicalism appear to be normal and mainstream. For the radical right, this reflects the knowledge that most Americans fundamentally oppose what the FRP and CN movement want to do to government and society. They have no choice but to create illusions and to sow reason-killing division and polarization, and reason-killing emotions such as distrust, intolerance, fear, anger and bigotry.
Radical conservatives want to push the window to the right,
radical liberals want to push it to the left --
maybe the window can be stretched in both directions
at the same time with echo chambers siloing the rhetoric and ideas
off from each other
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