By Quin Hillyer at the Washington Examiner;

Democrats are badly overplaying their hand against Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

[kpolls]

They look like vicious partisan hacks rather than public servants, all while raising the profile on the one topic (judges) that unites the otherwise fractious Trump-conservative-Republican coalition and energizes right-leaning voters.

President Trump has shown an ample proclivity to step on his own message and torpedo Republican candidates, if Democrats will just get out of the way. The Democratic “base” is energized anyway, and will remain so, and the more that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and his cohorts put the focus on a fruitless fight against Kavanaugh, the less ability they will have to appeal to moderate or “swing” voters on issues where Democrats poll well.

As a conservative, I am delighted to see the Left play their politics this way, because I want to keep a Republican majority in the House and expand it in the Senate. Yet I think it is terrible for our political system when invective, histrionics, and smears against a superbly qualified judge and fine human being are seen as the norm for court nomination.

Republicans in the Senate have never, not once, tried to turn a Supreme Court nomination fight into a political Armageddon via character assaults and overheated rhetoric. They didn’t do it against Stephen Breyer, nor against Ruth Bader Ginsburg. They didn’t do it against Elena Kagan or even take a very strong cudgel against Sonia Sotomayor even though she offered plenty of opportunity with her comments about a “wise Latina” making a better judge specifically by virtue of her ethnicity and gender.

Yet here we have Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., saying that to vote for the mild-mannered Kavanaugh would make someone “ complicit in the evil.”…

[As usual, follow the link for the rest of the column.]

 

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