Republican weakness is more reason, not less, to vote Republican in November

To save the Constitution, you must ignore the barrage of Democrat slanders and the seemingly weak Republican responses, and vote Republican in November.

Vote RepublicanOver the weekend, I saw two arguments trending on Twitter. The first, from the Left, is the argument that the attacks against Kavanaugh must be real, rather than knee jerk opposition to any Trump nominee, because no one made such allegations against Gorsuch. The second, from conservatives unhappy with the way in which Senate Republicans are handling the accusations against Kavanaugh, sees them stating that they will not vote for Republicans in November.

These two lines of thinking are related. The first is dishonest and the second dangerous. Let me pick them apart.

For those inclined to give any credence to the claim that the Leftist failure to attack Gorsuch as a sex predator means that the charges against Kavanaugh must be legitimate, don’t! It’s not a credible argument but is, instead, a red herring for two reasons:

First, Gorsuch replaced Scalia, which was a straight one-for-one exchange. That is, one conservative justice who believes that the Constitution is the central document in American law and policy replaced another conservative justice who held the same belief. Kennedy’s seat, though, is something quite different. He was the swing vote, routinely going back and forth between the four conservative justices and the four Leftist justices. Replacing him with Kavanaugh, however, will give conservatives a solid, unswinging 5-4 majority.

Second, Gorsuch’s nomination did not occur in an election year. Kavanaugh’s nomination, however, comes, not just during an election year, but on the eve of a mid-term that Democrats believe will give them a majority in the House and, maybe, in the Senate. As Sen. Mazie Hirono (D – HI) let slip, once the Democrats have that majority, they can stop all Trump legislative initiatives, including getting any effort to place constitutionally-oriented justices on the Supreme Court. If Democrats can run out the clock and get a Blue Wave in November, the Court will be hamstrung at 4-4 for the next two years.

With Trump completely ineffective for two years, ending his popular initiatives, and with the media attacking him non-stop, he’ll likely lose in 2020. This differs greatly from the 2012 election for Obama. In a way, the Republican wave saved him from doing anything else that Americans would hate before the 2012 election, and the media continued as his relentless cheerleader.

Keep in mind that preventing a solid majority of strict constructionists on the Supreme Court is unbelievably important to Democrats. Indeed, it is their most important effort because it is the only way that they can ensure the continuation of the one thing their base cares about most: Abortion. Democrats are terribly worried that a conservative majority will find a way to cut through the shadows of emanations of penumbras that characterize the Roe v. Wade approach to the Constitution and, instead, return the abortion question to the states, where it rightfully belongs. Just as they could not win on gay marriage at the ballot box and had to get it in the hands of nine un-elected lawyers, so too are they worried about abortion returning to the voice of the people.

Here’s the deal, though, about this abortion question. I actually don’t care whether you’re pro-Life or pro-Abortion. The reality is that this Democrat strategy is still wrong. It’s wrong to destroy a man’s reputation to avoid the ballot box and it’s wrong because this is not the way this representative democracy is supposed to work. A constitutional representative democracy is supposed to work by giving voters at the state and national level a say about pivotal issues, rather than having nine un-elected lawyers (lawyers, for Heaven’s sake!) making these fundamental decisions.

Just as the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision tore apart the nation before 1860, so too did Roe v. Wade in 1973. Profound moral matters should be handled through national consensus, not the biases of nine un-elected lawyers.

To sum up, Kavanaugh’s nomination is the perfect storm: his presence on the Supreme Court will shift the balance of power in favor of constitutional jurisprudence, possibly for decades. The only way to stop him is to destroy him personally and, through that destruction, run the clock out in the hopes that Democrats can ride a Blue Wave that leaves Republicans helpless for the next two (or more) years.

This summation leads me to the second point, which is to challenge those Independents, Libertarians, Conservatives, and Republicans who respond to the Democrat strategy by crying “a plague on both your houses” or by saying that “Republicans are so feckless I can never vote for them again.” They aren’t being principled. Instead, they are playing right into the hands of the Leftists putting on this disgusting, defamatory, un-democratic, un-constitutional display. I get it that these voters are angry, but they still have to ask themselves, “Do I really want to be a pawn of the Democrats?”

I also think that those who are castigating Sen. Grassley and Co. as being completely weak and incompetent are being unfair to them. The numbers’ game means that true Republicans in the Senate have no room for maneuver. Remember, the Republicans in the Senate have only a bare majority: 51-49. If one Republican Senator pulls away, there’ll be a tie that Pence can break. However, as we discovered with the vote to repeal Obamacare, if two Republican Senators pull away, Democrats win. (And that is why I think McCain, while a war hero, was a pathetic, vindictive, nasty little man. But I digress….)

On Kavanaugh, stalwart Senate Republicans are worried not just that two possible Senators who might pull away but about three possible turncoats: Collins, Murkowski, and Flake. Collins and Murkowski always go weak at the knees when things are framed as “women’s issues” and both, I believe, are pro-abortion. Flake loathes Trump and it’s an open question whether he’ll side with principled conservativism or pull a McCain and vote against Trump, principled conservativism be damned.

If two of these mushy Senators side with the Democrats, the Republicans cannot approve a Trump nominee to the Supreme Court. That gives those three Senators an extraordinary amount of power. If they want an extended hearing (and I believe both Collins and Flake have demanded such a hearing), an extended hearing there shall be. Poor Grassley, no matter his personal principles, has no choice but to obey.

The only way to do away with this power imbalance, which gives disproportionate weight to those most likely to side with Democrats, is to give the Republicans an overwhelming majority in both House and Senate. That way, the weak conservatives will be pulled into the stronger conservative category, rather than forcing the strong conservatives to kowtow to RINOs. I don’t need to remind you that, as I mentioned above, on the eve of an unusually pivotal mid-term election, Republicans have a bare majority in the Senate and, if polls mean anything, a fragile majority in the House.

If you don’t recognize how essentially powerless conservatives in Congress are and you decide not to vote, or to throw away your vote as a protest vote for some third-party candidate, then you have handed Congress over to the Democrats. Frankly, I think that’s evil.

The Kavanaugh circus has shown us what America in Democrat hands will look like. The rule of law will be over. Due process will be over. Congressional dignity and standards will be over. Fair treatment for whites and men (and, especially, white men) will be over. Sen. Mazie Hirono (who silently worked for a Senator credibly charged with sexually harassing a woman for decades) will be the new face of Congress:

The profound Leftward shift amongst Leftists promises that, in the future, no matter the charge, if you’re a conservative, you’re guilty. Moreover, you’re not even presumptively guilty pending proof of innocence (which is an almost Satanic inversion of our wonderful Anglo-Saxon system of jurisprudence). You’re just guilty.

Even Stalin conducted his show trails using credible (although entirely faked) evidence to make a pretense that would justify executing political opponents. Hirono and her ilk are bypassing that pretense and opting, instead, for the reign of terror seen in the French Revolution, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, or Mao’s Cultural Revolution: You will be destroyed, not for what you’ve done (whether for real or because of faked evidence), but simply for who you are.

In other words, this election is not about this congress-critter or that congress-critter. It is an election with profound national consequences. If Americans do not create a solid Republican majority that enables Trump to continue appointing strong constitutionalists to the court, it’s over. Not the election, but our entire constitutional system, one based upon the equality of all people before the law and upon reining in government’s otherwise unlimited power over the individual.

In November 2018, you shouldn’t care that large numbers of Republican congress-critters are quislings. Most people are. There’s security in numbers and the Republicans simply don’t have those numbers. The weakest ones find it hard to stand against the Left’s constant siege, one that paints them as the Devil incarnate for hating women, gays, minorities, etc. For those who are just vague believers in lower taxes and stronger national security, without any deep and abiding intellectual foundation for those beliefs, they’re going to be vulnerable to those smear tactics. The only way to bolster these people is to give them a sense of security.

So if you want stronger Republicans on the ballot, the place to make the change is during the primaries (assuming you aren’t saddled with open primaries, as we are in California, where there is no Republican on the Senatorial ballot for November). For now, if you don’t want Hirono’s and Pelosi’s America, you better vote for your Republican, no matter how bad he or she is. Remember, for the weaklings, give them the numbers that provide them with the safety they need to make conservative choices.

Also, in California, I again urge you to write in Travis Allen’s name for Senator. It’s just wrong that, at this pivotal point in history, Californians have been denied a true choice for United States Senator.

Image credit: Democratic Donkey & Republican Elephant by DonkeyHotey. Creative commons. Some rights reserved.