The Kavanaugh Nomination And The Religionist Right

This week, as the carefully constructed persona Republican operatives had created for Brett Kavanaugh started to crack, so did Trump's cool. By Thursday night, at a rally in Las Vegas, he was demanding the Senate Judiciary Committee just steamroll the confirmation through and to hell with the legal and normative niceties. That smell is desperation... mixed with sulphur.

If Trump says someone is a "fine, fine person," vouches for his character and claims someone is a "gentleman" who has "great intelligence," what does that mean when most people already realize that Trump himself possesses none of those characteristics? A new poll from USA Today by Ipsos finds an unprecedented level of disapproval for a nominee to the Supreme Court. Those surveyed say by 40% to 31% that the Senate shouldn't vote to approve his nomination, the first time a plurality of Americans have opposed a Supreme Court nominee since polling on the issue began. Republicans ought to especially worry that just 24% of independent voters support the confirmation.

Frank Schaeffer's father, Francis Schaeffer, was one of the original "founders" of the "religious right." Frank worked inside it for many years before realizing he wasn't doing Jesus' work there and quit-- loudly. He and John Pavlovitz are both clear-eyed about what they see coming out of the for-profit evangelical movement today... and both are standing up against it-- and especially standing up against the identification of Christianity with Trump and his immoral movement.

Jeremy Peters' article in the NY Times yesterday, Evangelical Leaders Are Frustrated at G.O.P. Caution on Kavanaugh Allegation, looks at the rumblings from the far right religionists over Kavanaugh-- and it isn't because they're concerned about his character or about the credible allegations of attempted rape and his dishonesty in confronting it. Grifter Ralph Reed warned that if Senate Republicans fail to confirm him "it will be very difficult to motivate and energize faith-based and conservative voters in November."

Worried their chance to cement a conservative majority on the Supreme Court could slip away, a growing number of evangelical and anti-abortion leaders are expressing frustration that Senate Republicans and the White House are not protecting Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh more forcefully from a sexual assault allegation and warning that conservative voters may stay home in November if his nomination falls apart.

...The evangelical leaders’ pleas are, in part, an attempt to apply political pressure: Some of them are warning that religious conservatives may feel little motivation to vote in the midterm elections unless Senate Republicans move the nomination out of committee soon and do more to defend Judge Kavanaugh from what they say is a desperate Democratic ploy to prevent President Trump from filling future court vacancies.

“One of the political costs of failing to confirm Brett Kavanaugh is likely the loss of the United States Senate,” said Ralph Reed, the founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition who is in frequent contact with the White House.

...The evangelist Franklin Graham, one of Mr. Trump’s most unwavering defenders, told the Christian Broadcasting Network this week, “I hope the Senate is smarter than this, and they’re not going to let this stop the process from moving forward and confirming this man.”

Social conservatives are already envisioning a worst-case scenario related to Judge Kavanaugh, and they say it is not a remote one. Republican promises to shift the Supreme Court further to the right-- which just a few days ago seemed like a fait accompli-- have been one of the major reasons conservatives say they are willing to tolerate an otherwise dysfunctional Republican-controlled government. If Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination fails, and recent political history is any guide, voters will most likely point the finger not at Mr. Trump but at Republican lawmakers.

To be sure, evangelicals leaders are trying to push Senate leaders to stiffen their resolve to force the Kavanaugh confirmation to a vote at a time when it may be politically perilous to do so. And the likelihood that the base will stay home in November and risk handing the Senate to the Democrats may be relatively low, given how popular Mr. Trump remains with white evangelicals.

The reason the prospect of Judge Kavanaugh’s defeat is so alarming to conservatives is that they fear he could be the last shot at reshaping the nation’s highest court for years. If Republicans were to lose control of the Senate, where they hold a 51-to-49 majority, in November, Mr. Trump would find it difficult to get anyone confirmed before the end of the year. Even if Senate leaders were able to schedule hearings and hold a vote, there could be defections from Republican senators uneasy about using a lame duck session to ram through a lifetime appointment that would tip the court’s ideological balance.

Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Dallas and one of Mr. Trump’s most vocal evangelical supporters, said he did not know who was telling the truth, Judge Kavanaugh or Dr. Blasey. “But I can say with absolute certainty,” he added, “that the Democrats don’t care who is telling the truth. Their only interest is in delaying and derailing this confirmation.”

“The White House is walking a tightrope,” Mr. Jeffress said. “They cannot summarily dismiss these allegations and alienate G.O.P. and independent female voters in the midterms. Neither can they abandon a nominee they and their base strongly support.”

On Thursday, more groups affiliated with the religious right piled on: Concerned Women of America’s legislative action committee sent a blast to its members urging “No More Delays,” and the American Family Association sent out another, “Confirm Kavanaugh Now!”

The importance of the Supreme Court to the Trump White House and the Republican Party is difficult to overstate. Mr. Trump has heralded Justice Neil M. Gorsuch and Judge Kavanaugh, his two Supreme Court nominees, as crowning achievements in an otherwise uneven presidency. Conservative groups have spent tens of millions of dollars building the men up as legal luminaries, gentleman scholars and the fulfillment of Mr. Trump’s campaign promise to nominate judges who have “a record of applying the Constitution just as it was written,” as one ad by the Judicial Crisis Network described Judge Kavanaugh.

A relatively smooth, predictable confirmation fight has also been a key part of Republicans’ strategy to keep the Senate. In the 10 states that Mr. Trump won where Democratic senators are up for re-election, Republicans have attacked Democrats for either opposing the judge or remaining noncommittal. But Dr. Blasey’s claims may have given Democrats who were on the fence a way to vote no without paying a steep political price.

Even social conservatives who describe Dr. Blasey’s account as part of a Democratic plot to upend the nomination acknowledge the bind they are in. While they decry the process as tainted and unfair, some are also arguing that they cannot be indifferent and insensitive to a victim.

...In the days since Dr. Blasey went public in an interview with the Washington Post and alleged that, when they were both teenagers, Judge Kavanaugh pinned her down on a bed, clapped his hand over her mouth and groped her, Republican leaders and White House officials have urged a muted and restrained approach. Show Dr. Blasey respect; offer to hear her out; and avoid questioning her credibility, at least directly, they have agreed in private conversations.

But many conservatives see little use in being deferential when, they argue, the Democrats play by no such rules. They look back at the failed confirmation of the Republican nominee Robert Bork in 1987, whose writings on civil rights were picked over by Democrats, and the 1991 hearings for Clarence Thomas, who faced testimony from Anita Hill that he had sexually harassed her, and they see a sophisticated and ruthless Democratic machine bent on discrediting their nominees.

“Republicans are right, as a moral matter as well as a political matter, to take allegations of misbehavior like this seriously,” said Frank Cannon, president of the American Principles Project and a veteran social conservative strategist. “At the same time, we’ve seen anything and everything thrown at Republican Supreme Court nominees for decades,” he added, noting that Republicans have been slow to understand that Democrats are “playing by different rules.”

“From the point of view of the average Republican conservative,” Mr. Cannon added, “these people aren’t the apparent monsters they’re being made out to be,” referring to maligned judicial nominees like Justice Thomas, Judge Bork and Judge Kavanaugh.

Privately, some conservatives were thrilled that Dr. Blasey and her lawyer have resisted the opportunity to testify in the Senate on Monday and demanded instead that the F.B.I. first investigate her claims. That would be just enough, they said, to give Republicans the justification for moving forward without her. The Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, made clear on Wednesday that he would not postpone a hearing past Monday.

And once the Senate puts the Kavanaugh nomination on track for a final vote, barring any unforeseen disclosures, that sets up a fight that Republicans could win in the Senate but might ultimately lose at the ballot box in November. The level of outrage could run so hot among Democrats, who would likely use every procedural and political tool at their disposal to delay confirmation, that it could provide even more fuel to an already energized liberal base.

Some conservatives, however, seem happy to have that fight.

“Given the confirmation theatrics, followed by this allegation that was held until the last moment, this could be seen as another partisan attack and could actually fuel conservative turnout,” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council.

Conservatives are likely to use protests and other forms of resistance to Judge Kavanaugh as a way to clarify for unmotivated Republican voters what Democratic control of the Senate means: a Trump-nominated Supreme Court justice would never be confirmed again.

“If Chuck Schumer is majority leader and Dianne Feinstein is chairman of the Judiciary Committee,” said Mr. Reed of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, “it will be open season on any Trump nominee to the federal bench at any level of the judiciary.”

Let me go back to Frank Schaeffer for a moment. He's working with Ted Lieu and I on promoting the Vote Common Good mission and I asked him to connect it again with the stand evangelical hucksters like Reed, Franklin Graham and Robert Jeffress and taking with their worshipful approach to Trump. "Vote Common Good is inviting Christians to use their votes to change Congress in 2018," he wrote. "Why? Because you know who doesn’t have to worry about getting endorsed by neo-Nazis, white nationalists and racists? People who don’t give neo-Nazis, white nationals and racists any reason to believe that they share their views. Why? Because in places like El Salvador and Guatemala there is a white colonial elite and in the middle a mixed white management class and at the bottom a wretched oppressed brown population who are regularly raped, murdered, rounded up at the whim of the elites-- rather like Trump/GOP's USA. Why? Because there is no need for burning crosses anymore: White racist bigots have Trump, the Republican courts, the Supreme Court and the entire Republican legislative branch doing all they can to suppress black political activity... and this The New Improved KKK is very effective. Why? Because the nonpartisan RAND Corporation warns that a growing disregard for basic facts could have dire long term consequences for American democracy. Do Republicans care that Trump is destroying even the concept of truth?

"Pastors, teachers, musicians, and others in the group will be crossing the country on a bus tour, spreading the message to believers in 31 crucial cities. The team includes Jacqui Lewis, John Pavlovitz, Michael Waters, Brian McLaren, Christy Berghoef, Shane Claiborne, Rev. William Barber, Rev. Vince Anderson, and others. They will be reminding people that our politics can be moved closer toward respecting Jesus’s commandment to love our neighbors, even “the least of these.” If you are in one of the cities listed below and want to learn more about how you can be a part of this movement, please visit the Vote Common Good website and sign up to do what you can. Our democracy depends on YOU!"