Coming Soon to a Theater Near You: ‘Kavanaugh II’

Coming Soon to a Theater Near You: ‘Kavanaugh II’
Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh speaks at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the nomination of Kavanaugh to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, on Capitol Hill in Washington on Sept. 27, 2018. (Michael Reynolds/Pool/Getty Images)
Roger L. Simon
9/20/2020
Updated:
9/21/2020
Commentary

Back up, Don Corleone! Democrats are threatening to “go to the mattress” if “Don” Mitch McConnell follows through on confirming “Don” POTUS’ replacement for Ruth Bader Ginsburg before the election.

Only slightly more genteel than the mafia, “the mattress” in this instance includes abolishing the filibuster and expanding the Supreme Court, naturally with ideological semblables.

Never mind that RBG herself was against court “packing,” calling it “partisan” in an interview with Nina Totenberg, adding “9 seems to be a good number... I think it was a bad idea when President Franklin Roosevelt tried... I am not at all in favor of that…”

Or that if the Democrats pack the court with three or four new justices voting their way, and then the Republicans come back and do the same, pretty soon the Supreme Court will be as large and useless as the U.N.

None of this, however, is of any moment to Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-Mass.), among others, or Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) or, of course, the capo di tutti capi (insert the feminine, if you wish) Speaker Nancy Pelosi who has put even “impeachment” (again!) on the table if the Republicans go further.

Which means, of course, coming soon to a theatre near you: “Kavanaugh II.”

But before I go further, lest I be thought of as a partisan hack, neither side comes off here in anything close to shining armor. For all the hoity-toity talk, Supreme Court nominations and confirmations are fraught with hypocrisy, everyone claiming a high ground that doesn’t exist.

Precedents come and go and are revised again. Leaders say the opposite of what they said a year or two ago.

Meanwhile, The Constitution says nothing about timing—only that presidents nominate the justices and the Senate confirms. Even lame duck presidents have nominated justices on several occasions. It all comes down to power. If you have it, in this game you take it.

So, not surprisingly, in our era of faux-fairness the confirmation hearings have grown increasingly vitriolic. First were the notorious Clarence Thomas hearings, known forever as a “high tech lynching,” then the Brett Kavanaugh fiasco, perhaps the most repellent display of uncontrolled hatred we have ever seen in the U.S. Congress, at least in our lifetimes.

The Democrat senators behaved not like barbarians at the gate, but like barbarians who had already gone through it and were raping and pillaging at will.

Though ideological opposites, the collegiality cum deep family friendship between Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia—easily the two most famous Supreme Court justices of our time—about which we heard endlessly the last few days during the encomiums to RBG, have become like nearly invisible stars at the far end of a telescope.

If the Dems repeat the performance of the Kavanuagh hearings so close to the election, they will do irreparable damage not just to their party, but to all of us, RBG’s supposed plea for another president to replace her notwithstanding.

Some of these Democrats must know that, but the atmosphere is such that they will likely go ahead with their onslaught anyway. Paradoxically, at the same time I have seen lengthy text exchanges between liberal-progressives in which many of them are furious with their icon RBG, accusing her of selfishness and egomania for leaving them with this dilemma. She should have retired gracefully during the Obama administration so she could have been replaced by an equally progressive judge then.

Whatever the case, the repeat Kavanaugh performance will be made yet more treacherous for the Democrats since Trump has already announced that he is nominating a woman.

The nauseating sexual innuendo and unsubstantiated sleaze that dominated that hearing will be difficult to pull off against the likes of an Amy Coney Barrett, a woman with seven children, two of whom are adopted refugees from Haiti.

If the nomination goes to Barbara Lagoa, also a mother, the Dems on the Judiciary Committee will have to deal with a Cuban woman, two-for-one on the intersectionality sweepstakes their base seems to admire so much.

Behind all this, as most realize, is the specter of a reversal of Roe v. Wade. The Democrats have reason to fear this. Scientific times have changed since the Roe decision. In this era of more advanced sonograms and similar medical technical achievements, the mantra that “life begins at the moment of conception” seems less purely a spiritual concept and considerably more evidence based.

Be that as it may, the Democrats with their “feminist” constituency are paying little heed. A grand finale of sorts is approaching

And speaking of grand finales, one of the interests that cemented the heartwarming relationship of “RBG” and “Nino” (Scalia), we are told, was opera.

We seem to be in the midst of one ourselves with all the lead singers and the chorus on stage at once.

Call it “2020.”

But who will compose the music? Unfortunately for us, as it went in the opening line of Bernardo Bertolucci’s film “1900,” “Verdi is dead!”

Roger L. Simon is an award-winning novelist, Oscar-nominated screenwriter, cofounder of PJ Media and now columnist for The Epoch Times. His most recent of many books are “The GOAT” (fiction) and “I Know Best: How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic, If It Hasn’t Already” (non-fiction). On Parler and Twitter he is @rogerlsimon.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Roger L. Simon is an award-winning novelist, Oscar-nominated screenwriter, co-founder of PJMedia, and now, columnist for The Epoch Times. His latest book “American Refugees” can be ordered on Amazon. “Roger Simon is among the many refugees fleeing blue state neoliberalism, and he’s written the best account of our generation’s greatest migration.”—Tucker Carlson.
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