The Kavanaugh Counteroffensive

 

Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s opening statement before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday ranked third among the four most riveting live television events of my lifetime; just behind the Challenger disaster in 1986 and the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11, and just ahead of the New England Patriots legendary and improbable comeback against the Atlanta Falcons in Superbowl LI.

Kavanaugh’s statement and subsequent testimony were remarkable for a number of reasons, including his passionate self-defense and his fearless calling out of the Senate Democrats who created and sustained this circus.

Most people seem to have expected Kavanaugh to offer up a meek defense in a respectful tone while maintaining his studious temperament. Instead, he took the fight directly to his enemies. The Kavanaugh Counteroffensive was totally surprising and extraordinarily effective.

This confirmation process has become a national disgrace. The constitution gives the Senate an important role in the confirmation process, but you have replaced advice and consent with search and destroy. Since my nomination in July there’s been a frenzy on the left to come up with something, anything to block my confirmation.

Shortly after I was nominated, the Democratic Senate leader said he would, quote, “oppose me with everything he’s got.” A Democratic Senator on this committee publicly referred to me as “evil.” Evil. Think about that word, and said that those who supported me were, quote, “complicit in evil.” Another Democratic senator on this committee said, quote, “Judge Kavanaugh is your worst nightmare.” A former head of the National Democratic Committee said, quote, “Judge Kavanaugh will threaten the lives of millions of Americans for decades to come.”

I understand the passions of the moment, but I would say to those senators, your words have millions of Americans listen carefully to you given comments like those, is it any surprise that people have been willing to do anything to make any physical threat against my family, to send any violent e-mail to my wife, to make any kind of allegations against me and against my friends, to blow me up and take me down.

For decades to come I fear the country will reap the whirlwind. The behavior of several of the Democratic members of this committee at my hearing a few weeks ago was an embarrassment, but at least it was a good old-fashioned attempt at working. Those efforts didn’t work. When I did at least okay enough at the hearings that it looked like I might actually get confirmed a new tactic was needed. Some of you were lying in wait and had it ready.

Wow! Has any witness at any hearing before any committee of the United States Senate ever called out a group of Senators so directly and so devastatingly? He pulled no punches in calling out the entire Democratic side of the committee. He exposed their rank partisanship and utter lack of good faith. He carpet-bombed them.

But then he went further. Judge Kavanaugh needlessly associated himself with President Trump and called out the Clintons by name.

This whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about president Trump and the 2016 election, fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record. Revenge on behalf of the Clintons and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups. This is a circus. The consequences will extend long past my nomination. The consequences will be with us for decades.

These are not the comments of a man who thinks his nomination still has a chance. Reminding everyone of his ties to President Trump when the swing votes on which the nomination hang are held by Senators Flake, Murkowski, Collins, and Corker — no friends of Donald Trump to be sure — is not a strategy calculated to secure those votes.

Nor is calling out the Clintons and tying them to the radical fringe of the left-wing a strategy to secure votes. It was a parting shot at the greatest con artists and grifters in politics, around whom the left has repeatedly and shamelessly circled the wagons.

Based on Judge Kavanaugh’s tone, demeanor, the totality of his statement, and these quotes, in particular, it appears to me that his mission was not to save his nomination. In all likelihood, he believed that he was done — that at least two feckless Republican Senators would defect and hang him out to dry.

In the face of what appeared to be certain defeat, Kavanaugh refused to “go gentle into that good night.” He decided that if he must go down, he would go down in a blaze of glory to defend his honor, his reputation, and his good name. His refusal to withdraw from the process at that point was not about having his nomination confirmed, it was about shaming Democrats and forcing them to cast a shameful vote in committee and then on the floor of the Senate.

The Kavanaugh Counteroffensive achieved its aims with devastating effect and as a matter of collateral damage likely destroyed the “coordinated and well-funded effort” to destroy his nomination. Because he opted to go down in a blaze of glory, Kavanaugh probably won’t go down at all.

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  1. indymb Coolidge
    indymb
    @indymb

    Great rendering of a rhetorical salvo that I hope will cause a positive (not dire) turning point in our national politics! #smearbomb

    • #1
  2. Stad Coolidge
    Stad
    @Stad

    Nathanael Ferguson: Wow! Has any witness at any hearing before any committee of the United States Senate ever called out a group of Senators so directly and so devastatingly? He pulled no punches in calling out the entire Democratic side of the committee. He exposed their rank partisanship and utter lack of good faith. He carpet-bombed them.

    If I was within five inches of one of my major goals in life, I’d fight my rear end off too.  What’s the expression . . . “Keep your eye on the prize.”  Okay, getting your civil rights as a citizen is not the same as getting your dream job, but come on!

    Brett Kavanaugh has been an exemplary judge on the bench.  Maybe he didn’t think he’d ever be nominated to the Supreme Court, but when the prize is placed right before you?  Seize it!

    Looking back, Kagan, Sotomayor, and Ginsburg got off easy.  This should be a signal to Republicans the era of “bipartisanship” is over once and for all (actually, it never existed).  If bipartisan agreement does happen in the future, it will be by sheer luck instead of “deliberation” by the word’s greatest (least) “deliberative body” . . . 

    • #2
  3. Ralphie Inactive
    Ralphie
    @Ralphie

    It was a f you speech. Or rather ffffffff you speech.  Nassim Taleb talks about the power of having f you money, then you don’t have to be a slave.

    • #3
  4. Stad Coolidge
    Stad
    @Stad

    Ralphie (View Comment):
    Nassim Taleb

    The Black Swan . . . and I ain’t talking about the movie . . .

    • #4
  5. CarolJoy Coolidge
    CarolJoy
    @CarolJoy

    When you consider that those on a “search and destroy” mission against Kavanaugh – hoping to frame him with serious criminal offenses – are the same people who opened their pocket books up so that Kate Stenle’s killer got no jail time, a person realizes the Left has lost their collective mind.

    • #5
  6. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    The FBI which already gave him a clean bill of health on six background checks is about to spend a week investigating him; if they find something now it’ll be egg on their face… on the other hand, this is also the same FBI which used the dossier and lied to the court.

    • #6
  7. HoosierDaddy Inactive
    HoosierDaddy
    @HoosierDaddy

    This is a very credible theory.  I wonder if he will ever publish a book about this experience.

    A simpler explanation, though, would be that he just followed advice to imitate what Clarence Thomas did.   Hmmm, I guess those two are not mutually exclusive.

    What impressed me most was how emotional it made him whenever he referred to a family member. Not only the 10-year-old’s prayer (which got me crying spontaneously) but also explaining how he came to adopt the practice of keeping a detailed calendar-cum-journal in imitation of his father.  I loved his description of how his dad would pull out an old calendar during a family gathering and reminisce about an event memorialized in it.

    • #7
  8. Mrs. Ink Inactive
    Mrs. Ink
    @MrsInk

    CarolJoy (View Comment):

    When you consider that those on a “search and destroy” mission against Kavanaugh – hoping to frame him with serious criminal offenses – are the same people who opened their pocket books up so that Kate Stenle’s killer got no jail time, a person realizes the Left has lost their collective mind.

    What do you expect from people who think that it is fine to kill babies, but don’t want to punish rapists and murderers?

    • #8
  9. CarolJoy Coolidge
    CarolJoy
    @CarolJoy

    Ontheleftcoast (View Comment):

    The FBI which already gave him a clean bill of health on six background checks is about to spend a week investigating him; if they find something now it’ll be egg on their face… on the other hand, this is also the same FBI which used the dossier and lied to the court.

    Yes it is the same FBI that has been a politicized weapon against the Republicans.

    The Democrat leaders  are now  busy scrolling through the C Span videos of the hearing. If Kavanaugh said anything at all that can be refuted, he will be facing perjury. It won’t even matter how relevant his “false”statement is in terms of the Blasey Ford incident. If he stated his family never owned cats and only owned dogs, and some childhood friend remembers the family  had a kitty for  a week before it was given away, he will enter the same reality that Gen Mike Flynn has faced for the last 20 months. That is the major reason this “possible full week of investigation” is proceeding.

    • #9
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