Right-wing groups have rallied around Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, and on the first day of his confirmation hearing they launched a campaign to smear Democrats and activists who protested that the hearing was being held even though a vast amount of relevant material from Kavanaugh’s time as a White House lawyer has not been reviewed by the Judiciary Committee or released to the public. The night before the hearing, 42,000 pages of documents were received by the committee.
The tone of the right-wing response was set from the top, with Trump’s 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale ranting, “The Democrat resistance mob HIJACKED the Supreme Court confirmation process today. … It was a DISGRACE!”
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, whose group has been Trump’s partner in attacking the “deep state” and the Mueller investigation, released a video condemning the “air of violence, intimidation and lawlessness” at the confirmation hearing.
Catholic Vote, a conservative group, slammed protesters’ “attempt to hijack democracy” and Judiciary Committee Democrats who CV said “joined the mayhem with rude interjections and shouting of their own.”
The American Family Association’s Tim Wildmon released a statement warning that “the left is becoming more and more open with their hatred for President Trump and anyone who is associated with his administration. Quite frankly, it’s getting dangerous for these people and their families.”
The Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins also complained about the “angry mob” of protesters and Democratic senators who demanded that the hearing be adjourned until relevant documents were made available. What Senator Durbin called “the noise of democracy” was something far more apocalyptic to Perkins:
In the end, though, today’s spectacle says a lot more about the president’s opponents than it does about Brett Kavanaugh. Make no mistake: This hearing is a snapshot of where America is and where we’re headed if the Left has the reins of government. After more than a year and a half of correcting our country’s course, this administration will be forced to spend its time fighting the Left’s rejection of the rule of law — which was on grand display today, not just from the outbursts of protestors, but from the obstruction of senators themselves.
All of it validates what President Trump told evangelical leaders last week: the Left will stop at nothing. Just look at the violence of Antifa. The unhinged conduct of liberals should make it crystal clear what is not only at stake in the balance of the court — but the future of our country. If the first day of Kavanaugh’s hearing has shown us anything, it’s that America is at a critical stage. If Christians or conservatives step back for just one moment, it could result in the loss — not just of the fundamental freedoms reestablished over these last two years — but the loss of the republic as we’ve known it.
Religious Right groups and their political allies have been ecstatic at President Trump and Senate Republicans’ aggressiveness at filling the federal courts with right-wing ideologues, celebrating, as Richard Land of the Southern Evangelical Seminary said yesterday, the “remaking” of the federal courts and the creation of “a radical new federal judiciary” that “could be with us for a long time after Mr. Trump is gone.”
