I’ll make this short and sweet. Vox has a great chart up which compares who directly Dr Ford and the not-so Honorable Scotus nominee answered their questions Thursday. They compared every answer given and rated them for the completeness of their response (blues lines) and evasions (pink lines).
The results are striking. Dr Ford’s responses are a sea of blue. Calm and even as the voice she answered them with. His are shot through with pink, underscoring every non-answer, evasion and indignant riposte.
Despite the round of atta’s for That Person’s defiant stance, those pink lines are troubling. And enough Republicans know this to put the nomination on hold, pending further investigation. They also know that his tone, and that bit of peformance art delivered by Lindsey Graham, may placate the base, but are toxic to everyone else.
Meanwhile, Jon Chait notes that “the central theme of every judicial confirmation has been a promise in one form or another to apply the law dispassionately, to “call balls and strikes.” That person’s testimony “dispensed with any pretense of law as a neutral value”. Instead, he trafficked in partisan grievance and victimhood. As such it was “truly Trumpian” performance.
The GOP is going to have to decide if they want to go down that road with him.