PMO Mid-Term Message: Kavanaugh's Democracy Treason Is Only The Beginning

WASHINGTON – President Trump and his Conservative allies are now seeing their efforts to confirm Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh as essential to saving the Republican party's fortunes in the mid-term elections, and hope to use the fervent liberal opposition to his nomination as a graphic at the Supreme Court. example of the threat posed by a return to power of Democrats in Congress.

The increasingly aggressive attacks against Judge Kavanaugh's chief accuser and the dark warnings of his supporters against the Democrats are part of the effort to stir up Republican indignation at what they see as a democratic stratagem aimed at to steal a crucial seat in the Supreme Court.

"What the Kavanaugh controversy has done, it is to increase the intensity of the Republican vote, so that it is getting closer to the Democratic intensity, which is already in the background. "said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster. "Republicans have the impression that Judge Kavanaugh is a man who has led an honest and honorable life, certainly in adulthood, and he feels that his reputation is tainted and that his candidacy is put nominated. "

But even as Republican Senate leaders are more and more confident that Judge Kavanaugh will be confirmed, other party leaders fear that his confirmation may dispel some of the anger and undermine the party's powerful source of power. # 39; energy.

To keep this anger alive, conservatives such as Matt Schlapp, president of the Union of American Conservatives, argue that the intensity with which the Democrats attacked Judge Kavanaugh should represent for the Republicans the threat posed by the loss of one or both houses of Congress in November.

The Democrats "do not just disagree with Trump, they hate him and they want him in jail," Schlapp said. "Kavanaugh's confirmation is the personification."

"The purpose of this election," he added, "is No. 1. If the Democrats win the House, they will dismiss him; No. 2, we finally recover our country and the Democrats want us to flee. No. 3, we want Kavanaugh. "

The other allies of the president were just as direct.

"What we see with Kavanaugh is a dry race," said Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime friend of the president who has close ties with conservative activists. "You attended the general rehearsal of the removal of President Donald Trump."

For his part, Mr. Trump intensified his attacks against the Democrats for their "vicious and despicable" treatment of Judge Kavanaugh, as he said on Twitter. On Thursday, the president linked Kavanaugh's confirmation directly to his party's prospects in November, tweeting that the show of confirmation "has an incredible impact on the voters".

"People get a lot better than politicians," Trump added. "This great life can not be spoiled by petty and despicable democrats and totally depreciated allegations!"

If Judge Kavanaugh confirmed the final vote of the Senate in the last vote Republicans hope to hold this weekend, it would most likely mean a majority for the Conservatives of the court for years to come. And from the beginning, this possibility framed the big battle for the candidacy.

Then it was alleged that the judge tried to rape Christine Blasey Ford while they were teenagers. This has injected into the debate issues of justice for victims of sexual assault, a combustible topic of more than a year in the # MeToo movement.

Although Republicans have always hoped that the Democrats would use all the political and procedural means at their disposal to slow down Judge Kavanaugh's confirmation, many of them said they were caught off guard by the intensity, fury and the persistence of the opposition.

Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, expressed this sentiment on Thursday when he condemned the actions of activists he described as "raging in the corridors, approaching airport members and returning home." them". Part of the Republicans' more aggressive reaction to the past few days have been a reaction to this and a realization that the Conservatives should fight back.

"This process," said Mr. McConnell, "has been governed by fear, anger and a sneaky game for too long."

While anger against Republicans who tend to believe that Judge Kavanaugh's denials of Mr. Blasey's story have animated many leftist women, many conservative women are also angry for what they call "hit "posing as a social justice campaign. Many of these women say they are furious with Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the highest Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, who kept Mr. Blasey's allegation with Senate Republicans until a confirmation vote appears imminent .

Hugh Hewitt, the Conservative radio host, devoted a portion of his program this week exclusively to the appellants. "All this fiasco has put women back more than a decade," said one of them. Another exclaimed: "I am so angry that I can barely breathe."

At Trump's rallies in Tennessee and Mississippi this week, voters polled said they did not consider Mr. Blasey's complaint credible.

"She deserved an Oscar," said Justin Hanna, 33, of Savannah, Tennessee, about Dr. Blasey's testimony. "I just did not buy it."

Right-wing anger only increased when the Senate was slow to vote on the candidacy in response to a request from Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake and his allies, who wanted a more in-depth investigation of the issue. part of the FBI. in the allegations against Judge Kavanaugh.

A NPR / PBS NewsHour / Marist poll released on Wednesday showed that a 10-point advantage that Democrats had staged in July to some extent from voters' enthusiasm had been reduced to two points, a statistical link. Some other polls, however, have not found such a closure of the gap.

But it remains to be seen whether an increased level of commitment from Republican voters will have a lasting impact if Judge Kavanaugh is confirmed this weekend, as the White House predicts.

Republican strategists said they could not know for sure what issues the electorate would be most animated in the next five weeks, when voters will vote – an eternity in the political press cycle.

"We will test the impact of Democratic tactics on various constituencies," said Steven Law, chairman of the Senate Leadership Fund, a "super republican PAC." "But it is possible that those who want them are enraged – at the same time. sides – are already so engaged that they do not need any additional motivation. "

And there is always the risk that the harder approach of Republicans will turn against voters who see them as dismissals for sexual assault. While he is campaigning for candidates in the House and Senate across the country, Trump called the mid-term elections a "vote to reject policies of anger, destruction and chaos" as he declared it Tuesday in Mississippi.

But in that same speech, he also dropped any semblance of deference to Dr. Blasey and adopted the aggressive, unapologetic approach adopted by many of his allies.

This is not universally perceived as a good idea of ​​the Republican Party or the White House. For example, many Republican senators privately say that they would prefer Mr. Trump to avoid lengthy discussion of Mr. Blasey. And several have publicly reprimanded him this week for denigrating him in Mississippi.

"I do not know, I do not know, I do not know, I do not know," said the president, mimicking Dr. Blasey's inability to remember certain details.

If these remarks put the senators uncomfortable, many people in the crowd that night applauded the president, seeing Dr. Blasey as any opponent of Mr. Trump. Initially, the President had been restrained from doing so.

White House staff said the situation had been tricky for a week and a half, and that Trump had decided not to tweet some of his more provocative and unfiltered thoughts after talking to his staff.

But by the middle of the week, as more and more Republicans began to shift the discussion of gender and justice to partisan politics, all the bets were bad.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina helped change the tone of her Senate colleagues late last week, when he delivered a rant. denouncing the way the Democrats have handled the Kavanaugh process. "It's the most unethical simulacrum ever since I was in politics," he said after Kavanaugh J. himself gave an angry and sometimes bellicose speech to the Senate Judiciary Committee. refuting Mr. Blasey's accusations.