Everything’s been said about Manafort and Cohen, so I’m going a bit in the weeds, since we all should remember that while that stuff is getting the headlines, the destruction of our democracy is ongoing. The lower courts have already been stuffed with racists and corporate whores, and the Supreme Court is about to be handed over to the oligarchs for a generation. Before I go on I should point out that the threat to abortion rights, while real and immediate, is hardly the true focus of the Republican Party. This is all about handing our laws over to the tender mercies of the oligarchs. We will, if Kavanaugh is confirmed, have a court firmly in the pockets of the Koch Brothers and their ilk. Even if we take the Congress and the presidency in 2020, we will be powerless to undo the harm that’s been done in the past few years, because the court will undo any effort to do so.
One of the purported glimmers of hope in this process is the fact that Susan Collins has done her typical imitation of Hamlet as the vote approaches. She has announced that she won’t vote for anyone who is hostile to Roe v. Wade. But, you know, she doesn’t know where Kavanaugh stands on the issue, and now she’s been cheered by the fact that he assured her that so far as he’s concerned, Roe is “settled law”. You can read about it at Think Progress, in a post entitled “Brett Kavanaugh thinks that Sen. Susan Collins is stupid”.
Which raises the interesting question: Is he right?
We all know that Susan Collins plays the part of a GOP “moderate”, which can be loosely defined as a Republican politician that puts on a show of distaste for right wing policies before voting to enact them. So far, it’s worked for Collins, though it may be wearing a bit thin. Collins’ typical process is to secure promises related to her vote; vote against her alleged principles (she clearly has none) and then pretend not to notice when the promises go unkept.
So, is she stupid, or is she a hypocritical political hack? It would be an act of kindness to go for stupid, because then she might at least be acting in good faith, but I’m going with hypocritical political hack. Though, to be charitable, she might be both.
First, let’s stipulate that even if she is stupid, she’s still a Senator, and she surely knows that the phrase “settled law”, especially when used by a right wing judicial nominee, merely means that a particular decision is currently the last word on a subject from the Supreme Court, and ripe for overturning if the nominee disagrees with it. The use of the phrase does not mean, or even really imply, that the nominee prefers to leave it settled.
Taking it a step further. Kavanaugh knows that Collins needs cover, so he gives it to her by using a meaningless phrase. Collins knows it is meaningless. Kavanaugh knows she knows it is meaningless. Collins knows that Kavanaugh knows that she knows it is meaningless. Both of them know that the press will pretend it is meaningful, even though they both know that the press knows it is meaningless. The press knows that Collins and Kavanaugh know that the press knows the phrase is meaningless, and Collins and Kavanaugh know that press knows that they know that the press knows that the phrase is meaningless.
That’s how these things work. Collins will vote for Kavanaugh on the strength of his assurance to her that Roe is settled law. He will then vote to reverse it. Collins will pretend to be surprised, but mostly she’ll just pretend that nothing has happened, like she did when she voted to gut Obamacare after Mitch McConnell made some promises to her that she knew he wouldn’t keep; he knew she knew he wouldn’t keep, and … Well, you know how it goes.
