The Kavanaugh Effect

Liberals across America have officially gone into meltdown mode now that all of their tactics to derail the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court have failed.  Kavanaugh took his seat on the Supreme Court and heard oral arguments for the first time on Tuesday.  They thought that 11^th hour sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh would cause Republicans to panic and withdraw his nomination, leaving the seat vacant ahead of the midterms.  Their plan relied on the Democrats taking over the Senate in the fall; at which time the Senate Democrats would have kept the seat formerly head by Justice Anthony Kennedy open until after the 2020 Presidential Election; at which time they hoped that President Kamala Harris or President Cory Booker would get to pick the next Supreme Court Justice.

The fiasco surrounding the Kavanaugh nomination may have led to a Kavanaugh effect, in other words, a surge in support for Republican candidates as a result of the gutter politics that the Democrats played in order to prevent Kavanaugh from taking a seat on the Supreme Court.  In July, a poll conducted by NPR, PBS Newshour, and Marist found that 78 percent of Democrats saw the November elections as very important while only 68 percent of Republicans felt the same way.  In October, the same poll found that 82 percent of Democrats saw the November elections as very important, a four percent jump since July, while the number of Republicans who saw the election as very important skyrocketed to 80 percent.  In other words, Republicans appear to have waken up to the reality that the hell that Kavanaugh went through will look like nothing in comparison to the hell that the Democrats would unleash on the country should they manage to take one or both houses of Congress this fall.  For all of the talk about the gender gap, it looks like the Kavanaugh effect enabled Republicans to close the so-called enthusiasm gap, which may play an equally important, if not more important role in the 2018 election than the gender gap. 

The Kavanaugh vote has already had enormous consequences in a handful of Senate races.  The final roll call vote came down to 50 yes votes and 48 no votes.  Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski voted “present,” saying she could not stomach voting for Kavanaugh.  Republican Senator Steve Daines, who supported Kavanaugh, did not vote because the Democrats’ delay tactics led to the Kavanaugh vote taking place on the same day as his daughter’s wedding. Remember, Republicans had hoped to have Kavanaugh confirmed by October 1^st, five days before Daines’ daughter’s wedding.   Kavanaugh only received the support of one Senate Democrat, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, who has to run in a state that President Trump carried by 42 points.  His constituents made their support for Kavanaugh perfectly clear; a poll found that 58 percent of Mountaineers wanted Kavanaugh on the Court.  President Trump touted this poll while attending a campaign-style rally on behalf of Manchin’s Republican opponent, Patrick Morrissey.

Four other Democrats representing very red states that President Trump carried in the 2016 Presidential Election will have to explain their “no” votes to their constituents.  The constituents of some of these red state Senators appear to have already punished their Senators for their “no” votes.  It looked all along like Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota would have the toughest re-election battle.  Unlike West Virginia, which voted for a Democratic President as recently as 1996, North Dakota has voted for the Republican candidate in every single Presidential election since 1968. Considering the fact that North Dakota has not elected a Democratic Governor in decades, Heitkamp should consider herself extremely lucky to have even served one term in the Senate, she squeaked by in 2012 as Mitt Romney carried the state by a massive margin. Her opponent this time around, Congressman Kevin Cramer has already ran and won statewide three times.

But the Kavanaugh effect has put Heitkamp in even more peril of losing her seat.  Fox News polling conducted between September 8 and 11, before allegations of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh became public, found Heitkamp narrowly losing to Cramer by single digit margins.  Polling conducted from September 29 through October 3, found Heitkamp losing to Cramer by double digits. The Fox News poll and other polling has led to the Real Clear Politics average of the North Dakota Senate race showing Cramer leading by 8.7 points, enough to change the race rating from “toss-up” to “leans Republican.”  This should not come as a surprise. By voting against Kavanaugh, Heitkamp ignored the will of 56 percent of voters in her state, who wanted to see Kavanaugh confirmed.  It looks like the voters of North Dakota will not soon forget Heitkamp’s decision to side with Chuck Schumer and Dianne Feinstein over her own constituents.  The Fox News poll found that 17 percent of likely voters in North Dakota would find themselves more likely to vote for Heitkamp if she supported Kavanaugh while 34 percent of likely voters said that Heitkamp voting against Kavanaugh would make them less likely to support her.

In addition to putting red-State Democratic Senators at risk, the Kavanaugh effect appears to have taken its toll on Democratic Senate candidates vying for Republican-held seats as well.  It looked for a while like Phil Bredesen, Former Democratic Governor of Tennessee, had a chance to pick up the open Senate seat currently held by retiring Senator Bob Corker. However, every poll taken since the end of September, when the Kavanaugh circus reached its boiling point, has shown Blackburn in the lead.  The New York Times poll of the Tennessee Senate race, conducted this week, showed Blackburn with an enormous lead of 14 points.  It probably doesn’t help Bredesen that left-wing groups have pulled his funding after he announced that he would have voted in favor of Judge Kavanaugh.  The fact that Project Veritas has released a video of Bredesen campaign officials claiming that Bredesen lied about his support for Kavanaugh in an effort to fool the “ignorant” voters of the Volunteer State probably does not help Bredesen that much either, it calls into question the characature of himself he has created of a moderate Democrat running in a deep red state.

The races have also tightened in Nevada and Arizona, which still remain the Democrats’ two best targets.  Prior to the Kavanaugh fiasco, Democrat Jacky Rosen led incumbent Republican Senator Dean Heller by narrow margins in most polls.  Her lead has evaporated, at least for now, Heller has led nearly every poll taken since the end of September; the Real Clear Politics average for the Nevada seat shows a tie.  The Real Clear Politics average for the Arizona Senate race now shows Republican Martha McSally ahead by less than half a percentage point, she has consistently trailed Democrat Kyrsten Sinema in most polls.  Polling has shown that a majority of Arizona voters, including a plurality of voters, wanted to see Kavanaugh confirmed.  

The political class, especially on the left, has worked to convince Republicans that standing by Kavanaugh would hurt them with women.  Two op-eds in The Federalist indicate that the left should not jump to conclusions when it comes to treating women as Stepford Wives robotically inclined to vote Democratic. Krista Kafer wrote an article for The Federalist titled “The Kavanaugh Crazy Motivated Me to Rejoin the Republican Party.” Kafer, a self-described Never-Trumper, cited “the changing narrative, the double standards, and the unethical gamesmanship” as motivating factors in her decision to rejoin the Colorado Republican Party.  Kafer’s story has much in common with that of the late Andrew Breitbart, a liberal who turned conservative after the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court hearings; the last time the Democrats really tried (and failed) to play dirty with a Republican Supreme Court nominee.

Adele Scalia, wife of Justice Antonin Scalia’s youngest son Christopher, also wrote an op-ed in The Federalist indicating her disgust with the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings titled “I’m an Immigrant, Minority Woman Going Republican Over Democrats’ Treatment of Kavanaugh.” Her father-in-law sailed through his confirmation hearings; making him the most recent originalist to enjoy bipartisan support in the United States Senate. Scalia maintained that prior to the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, she considered herself politically moderate, identifying with the Republican Party platform on the issue of abortion but supported positions more frequently associated with the Democratic Party when it came to affirmative action, gun control, and Black Lives Matter which, as she put it, “occasionally led to arguments with my husband and father-in-law.” Scalia “these events opened my eyes to the hypocrisy of the Democratic Party.  It’s actually a very exclusive club that wants me as a member based solely on stereotypes of who I am supposed to be.” Scalia, who had previously expressed reluctance to become a United States citizen, said that the Kavanaugh hearings empowered her to “become a citizen” and “vote against the bullies on the left who broke a good man for no other reason than political differences.”

Public opinion polling backs up these two women’s disgust with the way the Democrats handled the Kavanaugh nomination.  A CNN poll found that a whopping 58 percent of independents disapproved of how the Democrats conducted themselves with regards to the Kavanaugh nomination.  While a smaller majority of independents also disapprove of the way Republicans handled the Kavanaugh nomination, the Democrats definitely lead in the race to the bottom. The Democrats have a 28-point net disapproval rating among independents when it comes to how they handled the Kavanaugh while independents give Republicans a net disapproval rating of 21 points when it came to their handling of the Kavanaugh nomination. 

The Republican Party appears to have benefitted from a Kavanaugh effect, at least for now.  However, Republicans should definitely not take the “Kavanaugh bump” for granted and fight for every vote as Election Day 2018 continues to approach. With a little more than three weeks to go until the big day, President Trump has made his commitment to preventing a “blue wave” perfectly clear by campaigning for his desired candidates in House, Senate, and gubernatorial elections all across the country.  Men and women of goodwill all across the country have the opportunity to reject the tactics of mob rule and character assassination that have become synonymous with the American left.  Seize it.  Don’t let the Kavanaugh effect go to waste.