You wouldn't like Cocaine Mitch when he's angry. In a scathing floor speech Monday afternoon, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tore into the Left's latest effort to slime and discredit Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh -- ripping both the media and Democrats for their partisan, standards-free recklessness. He likened this week's embarrassing and infuriating machinations to living through a twisted version of 'groundhog day':
There they go again. Call it a one-year anniversary re-enactment. Senate Democrats re-opening the sad and embarrassing chapter they wrote last September. The latest allegation was blasted out by a major newspaper despite the apparent lack of any corroborating evidence whatsoever. The reporting was so thin, the story ran not in the news section, but on the opinion page. In fact, they’ve already had to issue an enormous correction. The writers conveniently failed to note that the supposed victim herself declined to be interviewed. And several of her friends say she has no memory of any such thing happening. We all remember this pattern from last time around: Shoot first and correct the facts later. And here’s another familiar pattern: Just like last September, little things like facts and evidence didn’t stop Democrats from rushing to exploit this. Even as the media was trying to backpedal, a number of the Democrat presidential candidates were hysterically calling for Justice Kavanaugh to be impeached. That includes several of our own Senate colleagues. And even after the massive correction, no one in that group has backed off of their ridiculous threat. This laughable suggestion is already earning scorn throughout the country...
What worries many conservatives, including Brit Hume, is that many average news consumers may see the manufactured swirl of controversy around Kavanaugh and assume that at least some of it might be true -- unaware of the facts, which much of the news media has worked diligently to obscure or ignore. The Left's tactics are worthy of scorn and ridicule. But it's a playbook of character assassination that worked against Clarence Thomas, gradually shifting public opinion over time. After those hearings, a strong majority of Americans believed Thomas and disbelieved Anita Hill, and rightfully so. But relentless revisionist history has slowly moved those numbers. Hume fears the Left is attempting to replicate that model with Kavanaugh. Later in his speech, McConnell turned to Senate Democrats' broader, norms-threatening political war against the independent judiciary:
Six of the Democrat presidential candidates — plus one who has now quit to run for the Senate — have publicly flirted with packing the Supreme Court. Court-packing. Today’s bold new Democrat idea is a failed power grab from the 1930s. Just a few weeks ago, some Senate Democrats nakedly threatened the Supreme Court justices in writing. Our colleagues sent the Court an outlandish brief, gravely intoning that ‘the Supreme Court is not well.' Here was the punchline: Either issue rulings we like or we’ll pack the court. This is not normal political behavior. These are the actions of a political party whose agenda is so alien to the Constitution that they feel threatened by fair and faithful judges...When you are this willing to launch unhinged personal attacks, you reveal a whole lot more about your own radicalism than about the men and women you target. This is my commitment, and the commitment of all my Republican colleagues: As long as we remain in the Senate, we will fight to preserve our fair and independent judiciary
That's a pretty damned powerful argument in favor of supporting every single Republican running for Senate in 2020, including McConnell himself. As for the New York Times' latest example of embarrassing Kavanaugh-related "malpractice," as Howard Kurtz accurately labeled it on Sunday, this is an important point many conservatives are making:
This is a really good point. The story is staring you in the face, and it IS a bombshell. It just isn't the story you want. https://t.co/dTf3LLMcPB
— Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) September 16, 2019
Mollie Hemingway has noted that the Times writers had a real bombshell on their hands: Dr. Ford's 'star witness,' closed friend Leland Keyser -- who never corroborated her friend's claims, but initially said that she believed her friend -- no longer believes Ford's story. Not only that, she'd been threatened and bullied by Ford allies who applied extreme pressure to alter her account (something that we'd already learned from the FBI and Justice on Trial). That reversal from Keyser, and the bona fide witness tampering directed at her, are major developments. But the Times chose to run a story about the "new," uncorroborated, victimless accusation, which Senate Democrats and the Washington Post had passed on. And they had to be publicly shamed into even mentioning the exceptionally relevant 'lack of victim' detail. I'll leave you with liberal law professor Jonathan Turley blasting the Left for embracing mob rule tactics:
Impeachment may make for good politics but, without a presumption of innocence, it is little more than mob justice dressed up as a constitutional proceeding. https://t.co/s0FjMCfBwa
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) September 16, 2019
I'll just add that I'm not at all convinced that any quixotic and scandalous effort to impeach Kavanaugh would make for good politics -- and some Democrats seem to know it. Sometimes, you just have to laugh:
The House Judiciary Committee is too tied up with "impeaching the president" to take immediate action on a potential investigation into allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler said https://t.co/Aw8gkHSFVA
— POLITICO (@politico) September 16, 2019
Some truth-telling from CBS News' Jan Crawford:
We report tonight the real bombshell: Christine Ford’s close HS friend (who Ford says was at the party when Kavanaugh allegedly assaulted her) said Ford’s story is not believable and told the FBI Ford’s allies pressured her, threatened her with a smear campaign to say otherwise https://t.co/GQhBTXHcze
— Jan Crawford (@JanCBS) September 17, 2019
Join the conversation as a VIP Member