Imagine what moderate Democrats were thinking as progressives from their party acted foolish and crazy at the all-but-assured Supreme Court confirmation hearing of Judge Brett Kavanaugh. Kimberley Strassel compares the internal fight happening between the Democratic Party and the Resistance today to the fight between the Republican Party and the Tea Party in 2009. She writes:
Christmas Eve 2009. For six long weeks Republicans had fought a losing battle to stop ObamaCare. The Senate GOP leadership finally succumbed to the inevitable, allowing the bill to pass. The tea party—new, angry, undisciplined—slammed Republicans as sellouts. It would spend the next few years on a purity drive, nominating unelectable Delaware non-witches and demanding Republicans engage in grand if futile efforts.
More than a few political commentators are watching Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination hearings and wondering just what stealthy strategy is driving the Democratic circus. Hint: What’s driving the party isn’t strategy at all. It’s a lobby. And one we’ve seen before.
Tea party. Resistance. Call it what you will. The 2008 election of Barack Obama stoked a conservative fury against a directionless GOP. The tea-party movement in time would become more organized and strategic, and from the start it played an important role in conservative politics. But even its founders privately concede that its initial focus on intraparty cleansing and the “fight” did harm.
The 2016 election of Donald Trump has now stoked a progressive rebellion, and elected Democrats are feeling its heat. This is how to explain the theatrics of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Democratic collective this week. Everyone down to Sen. Cory Booker’s mailman knows Judge Kavanaugh will be confirmed. The only purpose of the obstruction is catering to a resistance that wants a “fight”—even though it will prove futile and potentially damaging to the Democratic Party.
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