We begin today’s roundup with Lachlan Markay, Asawin Suebsaeng, Sam Stein, and Maxwell Tani at The Daily Beast on the Republican strategy to ram through the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh without an investigation:
Judge Brett Kavanaugh and his allies in Congress and the Trump White House concluded last week that time was no longer on their side.
And so, as new allegations against the Supreme Court nominee surfaced alongside unconfirmed rumors, they decided to mount a counteroffensive: demanding solidarity within the ranks and making an aggressive public relations push in Kavanaugh’s defense.
The most overt step came Monday as Kavanaugh and his wife sat down for an interview with Fox News host Martha MacCallum—an almost unheard of foray into the public eye for a Supreme Court nominee.
Ed Kilgore at New York magazine:
[T]here is now a strident and frankly substance-free mood among Kavanaugh’s conservatives defenders that is almost defiant in rejecting the accusations against him, and uninterested in alternative strategies for vindicating their constitutional views. Like the conservatives who came around to support for Donald Trump in 2016, they seem to have focused on fury at their ancient left-of-center enemies. And even though they could pay a high price if Kavanaugh goes down, his confirmation has become for them an end in itself.
These are the same Republicans who shrugged at the credible accusations of assault against Donald Trump, so were we to expect anything less?
Here’s Eugene Robinson’s take on the GOP’s strategy:
Republicans are learning that “we’re going to plow right through it” is a dangerous way to approach a minefield. [...] Why are Republicans in such a hurry? There’s a chance Democrats could take control of the Senate in November, turning McConnell back into the minority leader and dramatically reducing the chance that Trump will be able to appoint another far-right conservative ideologue to the Supreme Court. The odds of the Senate switching hands have been seen as pretty long, however — though the Kavanaugh fiasco seems to be improving them.
Jason Nichols at The Nation explains how Mitch McConnell and Chuck Grassley are doing everything they can to protect Kavanaugh in the face of a stream of serious allegations:
Republican leaders in the Senate have not respected the clear intent of a Constitution that sets up a system of checks and balances under which presidential nominations for “judges of the Supreme Court” may only advance after sincere and deliberate consideration by the US Senate. The “advice and consent of the Senate” cannot be properly obtained through a rushed, restricted, and hyper-partisan process of the sort that Grassley and McConnell have to this point perpetrated.
Meanwhile, Norman Eisen and Asha Rangappa write about Robert Mueller’s long gqame at USA Today:
The protracted negotiation with Mueller, moreover, provides a specific issue for the president to focus on with his lawyers and a channel for him to vent his frustrations. Allowing the president to believe he is calling some shots and pushing back on the investigation gives Trump the illusion of control and makes him less likely to panic, lose his temper, and impulsively try to fire Mueller or his boss, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
We may well have seen the beneficial results in the past few days. Despite a New York Times report that Rosenstein urged actions harmful to the president, a much feared Saturday Night Massacre II did not materialize. The claims — that Rosenstein offered to wear a wire around Trump and brought up the 25th Amendment — smack of spin by someone making mischief.
Don’t miss Michelle Goldberg’s excellent column:
Regardless of what happens to Kavanaugh, however, this scandal has given us an X-ray view of the rotten foundations of elite male power. Despite Donald Trump’s populist posturing, there are few people more obsessed with Ivy League credentials. Kavanaugh’s nomination shows how sick the cultures that produce those credentials — and thus our ruling class — can be.
On a final note, Paul Krugman explains how the GOP is running on anything but its policies:
One thing we do know, however, is that Republicans have decisively lost the battle of ideas. All of their major policy moves, on health care, taxes and tariffs, are playing badly with voters.
In fact, Republican policies are so unpopular that the party’s candidates are barely trying to sell them. Instead, they’re pretending to stand for things they actually don’t — like protecting health coverage for Americans with pre-existing conditions — or trying to distract voters with culture war and appeals to white racial identity. The G.O.P. has become the party of no ideas.