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Did Donald Trump hire or fire Brett Kavanaugh during last night's reality show? Who was "The Apprentice?"
One would assume a President would be a tad more judicious in the selection of an individual who holds the potential to set a conservative course for the High Court for the next 30 years.
Not so, our tweeter-in-chief. For the past two weeks, the president teased out July 9 as D-Day for his pick to fill the shoes of Anthony Kennedy. Stay tuned, folks!
Why the rush? Did Trump want to bone up on NATO bashing before the Summit in Brussels on Wednesday and the follow-up report to his handler, Vladimir Putin, in Helsinki?
Trump went through the motions of "interviewing" candidates for the Supreme Court job, but everybody knew that the fix was already in.
The president had his marching orders in the form of a list of suitable ideologues drawn up by the right-wing Heritage Foundation.
Following Trump's big reveal, Kay Coles James, president of Heritage, took a victory lap.
She posted a commentary on Heritage.org to say Kavanaugh will make an outstanding associate justice on the Supreme Court.
"I applaud the President on his choice and am grateful that he clearly understands the importance of fairness, impartiality, and faithfulness to the Constitution," she wrote.
James is too kind. Trump's selection of Kavanaugh only proved that he could read and understand the content of a list.
Heritage used "The Right Choice for America" as the headline for James' commentary. "The Right Choice for Trump's Base" is more accurate.
The expected Kavanaugh confirmation fight has already begun.
Richard Blumenthal, Democratic Senator from Connecticut promises, "a battle unlike any we have seen in history."
Blumenthal is playing right into the hands-on Trump, who wants a messy fight to fire up his base ahead of the mid-term elections.
Democrats aren't going to pull a Mitch McConnell on Kavanaugh. Cool-Hand Mitch ditched poor old Merrick Garland, making a patsy of Barack Obama, and corrupting the Supreme Court nomination process. Those hard-core tactics just aren't in the DNA of the current Democratic party.
During the upcoming confirmation process, investigators would have to find an actual skeleton in Kavanaugh's closet and present its bones to the Senate to get two or three Republican "no" votes on the nomination.
Kavanaugh will be confirmed.
Democrats need to keep their eye on the prize, taking control of the House by focusing on economic inequity, Trump's global trade war, and immigration reform.
They need to get out the vote by stressing the point that elections matter. The 2016 vote, for instance, brought us Trump, Neil Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.
Launching a take no-prisoners fight against Kavanaugh is not the way for the Democrats to win back the House.
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