Scenes from a meltdown

From Alexandra Smith, writing in the Washington Examiner:

As speculation in Washington mounted about who would be President Trump’s second Supreme Court nominee Monday night, protesters gathered in front of the Supreme Court ready to #Resist. Some were poised with Sharpie markers ready to fill in the blank with the chosen name, while others carried a mix of preprinted signs paid for by professional protesters from the Center for American Progress and Planned Parenthood.

When the announcement finally came that it would be the esteemed jurist Brett Kavanaugh, a number of people in the crowd were evidently so overcome with rage that they continued to push their “Stop Hardiman” signs high into the air for the television cameras. The event, headlined by 2020 contender Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., became so unruly that it forced live broadcasts to move and the police to shut down the surrounding area.

Leading Democrats replicated the lunacy:

During the announcement [that Brett Kavanaugh would be the nominee], the Women’s March mistakenly sent out a cookie-cutter press release declaring their opposition to “XX.” Former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia irresponsibly claimed that the nomination put lives in danger (that is, for those who weren’t already killed by the supposedly apocalyptic Republican tax cuts or repeal of net neutrality). Neera Tanden from the Center for American Progress dabbled in conspiracy theories involving Kennedy’s son, Trump, and a loan from a Russian bank.

America is not a lunatic asylum. Thus, it would eventually fall to Senate Democrats to come up with a coherent line of attack on Kavanaugh — one that passes the straight-face test.

This is proving much more challenging than filling in the “XX” and holding up the correct sign.

The Washington Post reports:

Democrats trying to defeat ­Kavanaugh were still searching for a potent line of attack Thursday. Some have focused on portraying him as a threat to take away health-care protections and abortion rights. Others have emphasized concerns about his views on presidential power and how he might apply them to Trump.

So far, their arguments have shown no explicit signs of winning over the two Republican senators seen as most likely to break ranks and oppose Kavanaugh: Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

There’s a reason for that. The arguments are not supported by evidence.

Anti-Trumper Ben Wittes and liberal law professor Noah Feldman have demolished the claim that Kavanaugh’s writings on investigating and prosecuting the president are favorable to President Trump. On health care, even the New York Times admitted that leftists like Elizabeth Warren are being dishonest (it uses the euphemism) “exaggerating” in their claims about what Kavanaugh has written about Obamacare.

The left is making it up on abortion too. It characterizes his opinion in Garza v. Hargan as an attempt to prevent an illegal immigrant from having an abortion. Kavanaugh did no such thing. He merely denied the existence of a new right for unlawful immigrant minors in U.S. Government detention to obtain immediate abortion on demand, thereby barring any Government efforts to expeditiously transfer the minors to their immigration sponsors before they make that momentous life decision.

Even the Washington Post acknowledged that Kavanaugh, who did join a more controversial opinion by a conservative colleague, was trying to “fashion a compromise” — striving to find middle ground on divisive issues. He did not say, as his colleague did, that illegal immigrant teenage girls have no constitutional right to abortion. His unwillingness to reach this conclusion brought criticism from some conservatives.

Before Trump nominated Kavanaugh, I wrote that he is not the left’s worst nightmare. That’s true in terms of substance.

But the Democrats’ inability so far to find an anti-Kavanaugh talking point that even their friends in the mainstream media can endorse must have a nightmarish quality for the left. Utterances by certain Democratic Senators facing the voters this year add to that quality.

Expect more scenes from this meltdown.

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