The Tribune

WHAT is really at stake in the great political circus now playing in Washington, DC?

As the tortuous process of confirmation for US Circuit Court judge Brett Kavanaugh has now been extended by at least another week, the easy answer to that question is that a win for Kavanaugh would cement conservative ideological control of the American Supreme Court, an institution established to remain above the political fray and deliver impartial justice to the nation.

The nearly universal conventional wisdom holds that with the addition of Kavanaugh, the high court would have a solid conservative/Republican majority. Kavanaugh would join Chief Justice John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito to form a cohesive right-leaning majority bloc that would diminish progressive American social and economic policies enacted over the past 85 years.

Anxious liberals see as threatened American iconic programmes such as Social Security and Medicare. They see as imperiled the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v Wade that established a woman’s right to have an abortion to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. Liberals believe issues such as gay rights, affirmative action and voting rights would be at a minimum circumscribed. The right of workers to organise and exert the significant clout of American labour unions would also be at stake.

Influential Republicans and conservatives, from President Trump to Senate majority leader McConnell, to pundits and commentators like Rush Limbaugh and the Fox News team, have done little to disabuse concerned Americans. Rolling back social and economic policies designed to benefit the many in favour of the few is avowedly, exactly, what they have in mind.

So Trump has, in nominating an avowedly partisan jurist like Kavanaugh and in carelessly not insisting on sufficiently thorough prior background checks, succeeded in turning the nation’s attention completely away from his miscellaneous misadventures. This is happening even as trade disputes with China intensify and relations with Canada and Western Europe slide and further deteriorate. Americans have been granted a respite from White House intrigue. Even the Mueller investigation has disappeared from the big headlines.

Those headlines have all concerned Kavanaugh and his principal but no longer only sexual misconduct accuser, Dr Christine Blasey Ford. Objectively, it did appear that Ford “won” the contest with Kavanaugh when both testified under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee, its 85-year-old chairman and its 85-year-old ranking minority member.

Ford seemed genuine. She appeared to be honest, frightened and quietly determined to pursue justice in denying to Kavanaugh the respect and admiration that would normally accompany a lifetime appointment to the highest US court. If her testimony is to be believed, he hardly deserves such acclaim.

Kavanaugh gradually revealed himself as the openly and fiercely partisan who scares progressives and endears himself to their opponents. Twenty-five years ago, Hillary Clinton angrily and famously lashed out at a “vast right wing conspiracy” whose objective was to demean and tarnish her efforts in areas such as health reform. Now in his televised and widely watched testimony, Kavanaugh essentially blamed a vast left-wing conspiracy for his current troubles.

Clearly angry and fiercely intemperate, Kavanaugh behaved badly before the Senate. He declared “this whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit... revenge on behalf of the Clintons and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups.” The judicious, even-tempered Kavanaugh we saw on television before Dr Ford’s allegations surfaced was nowhere in evidence last week.

Georgia State University law professor Eric Segall told the New York Times that Kavanaugh “is one of the most partisan nominees in a long time. I would think that any person, even acting in totally good faith, would not be able to put aside the obvious trauma of this hearing for him, whether he is telling the truth, lying, or suffering from cognitive dissonance”.

Thomas and Alito have admitted they were scarred by their own fractious confirmation hearings and both have proven to be almost reflexive conservatives in their rulings.

So the stakes are high in the Kavanaugh confirmation fight. But even if he is confirmed, a familiar remedy is available for those who disagree with him.

That remedy is to vote, next month, and in 2020.