Inside the 'extraordinary' campaign to put Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court - PBS NewsHour

[question everything]

Read (or watch) it and weep. A new book by WaPo Ruth Marcus "Supreme Ambition"

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/inside-the-extraordinary-campaign-to-put-brett-kavanaugh-on-the-supreme-court



Ruth Marcus:

So, there were a couple different campaigns. The first phase of the campaign came when Brett Kavanaugh wasn't on President Trump, then-candidate Trump's list to be on the Supreme Court. You may remember candidate Trump did something no candidate had done before, which is to say, here is my list. He put out one. He put out another. There was one name that was particularly missing from that list. It was Brett Kavanaugh.

So, when President Trump surprised all of us and became President Trump, Brett Kavanaugh had a problem. He wasn't on that list. And one of the people, I report in "Supreme Ambition," who went to bat for him was Justice Anthony Kennedy. He had clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy.

The White House was eager, desperate even, to convince Justice Kennedy that it would be safe to retire. And when Justice Kennedy came to the White House to swear in Neil Gorsuch, President Trump's first choice for the Supreme Court, he asked for some time alone with the president, and suggested that there was a name missing from his list. And, lo and behold, a few months later, Brett Kavanaugh's name turned up on that list.

Judy Woodruff:

How unusual for a justice of the Supreme Court to go personally to the president, as Justice Kennedy did?

Ruth Marcus:

It's quite unusual. It was a very unusual intervention from a sitting justice.

Justices can say nice things about people, but this was particularly effective. And it's an illustration of Justice Kavanaugh's ability to find extremely influential and powerful mentors. In some ways, the reason it was is hard for him to get on the list was, the president he had worked for, President George W. Bush.

(snip)

Ruth Marcus:

The book is called "Supreme Ambition" for two reasons. One is, it reflects Brett Kavanaugh's ambition since really from the very early years as a lawyer to get onto the Supreme Court. But it also reflects the ambition of the conservative movement to finally, after 30 years of trying and getting close, but having it elude them, to cement a conservative majority on the Supreme Court.

And the book tells the story of the lengths that Republicans in the Senate and elsewhere went to, to make sure that he was going to get across the finish line.


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And this is why we HAVE to vote for the candidate, as much as we detest hm/her

[StevieM]

1. This article misses the most important part of why Kavanaugh was nominated:

To pay back Ken Starr for the crimes that he committed during his tenure as independent counsel.