Kavanaugh’s Confirmation Thwarts Mob Rule For Now . . .

by Joseph Klein: Mob rule came very close to subverting America’s democratic constitutional republic. Fortunately for the country’s sake, enough brave members of the United States Senate faced down the mob’s intimidation tactics this time. They restored reason, justice and ordered liberty in confirming Brett Kavanaugh to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court after he had to endure weeks of character assassination. The unleashed mob had attempted to obstruct the whole process of Senate “advice and consent,” egged on by some irresponsible Democrat senators. Leftwing Alinskyite agitators yelled from the Senate galleries, staged disruptive demonstrations in the halls of the Senate, and stalked senators at their offices, restaurants, the airport and even at their homes.

After failing to get their way, some leftwing protesters clawed at the locked doors of the Supreme Court building as Justice Kavanaugh was being sworn in, shouting “shut it down.” Some Democrats in the House of Representatives are threatening impeachment proceedings against Justice Kavanaugh if they take control of the House. These Democrats would seek to perform their own do-over of the Senate confirmation proceedings in the House under the guise of an “impeachment” proceeding. They would be plowing over the same charges that the Senate had already decided were not sufficiently proven to prevent the one congressional body authorized by the Constitution to provide its “advice and consent” from confirming Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination.

In short, in opposing Justice Kavanaugh, the deranged left is literally attacking the core institutions and constitutional structure of our nation’s republic that help to secure the rule of law.

The Founding Fathers recognized the threat posed by mob rule and built safeguards against it into the Constitution. James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 63 that “there are particular moments in public affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn. In these critical moments, how salutary will be the interference of some temperate and respectable body of citizens, in order to…suspend the blow meditated by the people against themselves, until reason, justice, and truth can regain their authority over the public mind?” The Founding Fathers viewed the Senate as one such “temperate and respectable body.” As James Madison commented at the Constitutional Convention, the “use of the Senate is to consist in its proceeding with more coolness, with more system, and with more wisdom, than the popular branch” of the Congress.

The Founding Fathers would have been appalled at the level of dysfunction wrought by the Senate Democrats’ dirty tricks, dishonesty and poisonous rhetoric during what should have been a solemn deliberative process.

In Federalist No. 71, Alexander Hamilton warned against “unqualified complaisance to every sudden breeze of passion, or to every transient impulse which the people may receive from the arts of men, who flatter their prejudices to betray their interests.” He observed that “the people commonly INTEND the PUBLIC GOOD.” (Emphasis in the original) However, Mr. Hamilton also recognized how passions of the moment can be readily manipulated against the peoples’ own better sense of their interests. For that reason, he wrote, “it is the duty of the persons whom they have appointed to be the guardians of those interests, to withstand the temporary delusion, in order to give them time and opportunity for more cool and sedate reflection.” Mr. Hamilton went on to laud the “courage” of such guardians who “saved the people from very fatal consequences of their own mistakes…at the peril of their displeasure."

Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine, pictured above) displayed such courage in resisting the passions of the mob, including intimidation, to vote for Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation. In a speech she delivered on the Senate floor the day before the final vote, Senator Collins lamented “a confirmation process that has become so dysfunctional it looks more like a caricature of a gutter-level political campaign than a solemn occasion.” She carefully laid out the reasoning underlying her decision to vote for Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation, including an analysis of his judicial record. As to the uncorroborated allegations against Justice Kavanaugh of sexual assault, Senator Collins focused her attention on the fundamental legal principles of “due process, the presumption of innocence, and fairness.”

Channeling James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, Senator Collins declared, “We must always remember that it is when passions are most inflamed that fairness is most in jeopardy.” She said that the “presumption of innocence is relevant to the advice and consent function when an accusation departs from a nominee’s otherwise exemplary record. I worry that departing from this presumption could lead to a lack of public faith in the judiciary and would be hugely damaging to the confirmation process moving forward.” While Senator Collins credited Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee as being “sincere, painful, and compelling,” Senator Collins painstakingly reviewed both the lack of corroborating evidence for Dr. Ford’s charges and several further questions raised by her own testimony. After applying the lowest burden of proof test, the “more likely than not” standard, Senator Collins concluded that Dr. Ford’s charges leveled specifically against Justice Kavanaugh did not satisfy even that low level of burden of proof.

Weeks prior to the final confirmation vote, Senator Collins’ office had reported receiving threats of rape and other acts of violence against her staff from leftist opponents of Judge Kavanaugh. After Senator Collins delivered her speech explaining her rationale for voting in favor of Judge Kavanaugh, the enemies of the newly confirmed justice did not address Senator Collins’ thoughtful arguments on the merits. Instead, they hurled ugly epithets at her. The Women’s March, for example, called Senator Collins a “rape apologist.” The radical Women’s March leader and anti-Israel, Sharia-loving activist, Linda Sarsour, accused “white woman” Senator Collins of being “a traitor to women and marginalized communities.” The senator displayed “white supremacy live on the Senate Floor,” according to Sarsour, who added, “History will not treat her kindly.”

Planned Parenthood’s political arm accused Senator Collins of siding with those “who disbelieve, disrespect and even mock survivors” of sexual assault. Such polemics against Senator Collins are at complete odds with what the senator actually said in her speech about the survivors of sexual assault: “Every person—man or woman—who makes a charge of sexual assault deserves to be heard and treated with respect. The #MeToo movement is real. It matters. It is needed. And it is long overdue… We must listen to survivors, and every day we must seek to stop the criminal behavior that has hurt so many. We owe this to ourselves, our children, and generations to come.”

Is Planned Parenthood, which gave Senator Collins an award last November for her work on protecting reproductive rights, now calling the senator a liar when she says she does care about and respect the survivors of sexual assault? Does this pro-abortion group assume that one can only show such care and respect by unquestionably believing all accusations of sexual assault alleged by all women, even if they are lodged without a shred of corroborating evidence? Apparently so.

The usual Hollywood celebrities added their two cents worth on Senator Collins’ decision to vote for Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Saturday Night Live’s Trump impersonator Alec Baldwin, for example, said, “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a female US Senator who says f*** you to all American women…” That’s rich, coming from a man with his own history of anger management issues involving women.

Actress Molly Ringwald tweeted, “Susan Collins you are a betrayer of women.” The conceit of Ms. Ringwald and her radical feminist cohorts is that they presume to speak for all women. Their treatment of women as a monolithic group with a herd mentality that leads them in only one progressive political direction is the height of sexism.

Comedian Kathy Griffin, who held up a picture of President Trump’s severed head last year, tweeted in reaction to Senator Collins’ decision: “F******* YOUUUUUU.” This progressive political “commentator” must be auditioning for a place in the leftists’ hall of fame.

Peaceful protests and expressions of dissent are protected by the First Amendment. That includes the remarks of empty-headed, self-important celebrities, who are just a side show. However, the left’s tactics of disruption, intimidation, lies, weaponization of unproven accusations and incitement to violence threaten to lead us down the road to a second civil war. If Democrats regain control of the House of Representatives and seek to fan the flames of anger over Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation by threatening to reverse the Senate's exercise of its unique constitutional "advice and consent" authority under the guise of impeachment, the Democrats will be complicit in the left’s agenda to destroy America as we know it.
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Joseph Klein is a Harvard-trained lawyer and the author of Global Deception: The UN’s Stealth Assault on America’s Freedom and Lethal Engagement: Barack Hussein Obama, the United Nations & Radical Islam. His article was in FrontPage.Mag, a project of the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

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