Will Boof boost the GOP in the Bluegrass State?
By BERRY CRAIG
AFT Local 1360
I'd bet next month's Social Security check that Mitch McConnell believes Boof Kavanaugh fibbed through his pearly whites when he testified under oath before the Senate.
That, of course, is beside the point. The Senate's top dog doesn't care.
Machiavellian Mitch plays the long game. Boof is his hedge against Democratic presidents and Congresses to come.
McConnell knows that when the opposition gets back in, they'll go to work reversing the GOP's red-tooth-in-claw, social Darwinian scheme of enriching the already rich while shafting workers, consumers, minorities, immigrants and women.
With Boof on the bench, the Republicans have a solid 5-4 Supreme Court majority, probably for decades. McConnell is counting on the quintet to overturn Democratic bills that threaten the GOP's greed-is-good agenda.
Oh, Boof told the truth when he snarled, “What goes around comes around.” He evidently didn't realize the old saw cuts both ways.
Boof implied that vengeance would be his against Democrats for trying to torpedo his nomination. But Boof's brag might have backfired by making Democratic voters doubly determined to dump the GOP on Nov. 6.
Anyway, I'd also wager my December check
-- That deep down inside, Trump and the Ever Trumpers think Christine Blasey Ford spoke truthfully when she, under penalty of perjury and having passed a lie detector test, swore that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were teens.
-- That they're pretty sure Boof in his salad days was a puking, staggering, obnoxious drunk and flannel-mouthed frat boy, who, like many of them, has always been well-heeled and has traded on white privilege for his whole life.
No matter, the big lie tops big truth with Team Trump. After all, The Donald dotes on dictators.
Anyway, McConnell claims that Democratic opposition to Boof has boomeranged on them.
“The ironies of ironies, this has actually produced an incredible surge of interest among these Republican voters going into the fall election,” he crowed to USA TODAY right before the Senate confirmed Boof.
“We’ve all been perplexed about how to get our people as interested as we know the other side is, well, this has done it."
All along, Boof had the blessing of the GOP's almost all-white, mostly male base of plutocrats, neo-Confederates and Christians of the Jesus-loves-me-but-He-can't-stand-you persuasion.
Even so, a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll shows the "enthusiasm gap" between the R and D faithful is narrowing, at least for now. Trump has been bloviating about a “Red Wave” for weeks.
Anyway, I asked Kentucky Democratic activist Ellen Suetholz what effect the Kavanaugh controversy might have on our native state.
She’s not sure, and neither am I. But she added, “I think that it should invigorate Democrats.”
Veteran Louisville Courier-Journal columnist Al Cross suggested that “McConnell’s victory could be Pyrrhic.”
Added Cross: “The allegations against Kavanaugh remain unresolved, and his demeanor in response to them wasn’t judicial. The seating of such a justice on the Supreme Court would further energize the Democratic base, especially women who are fed up with what they see as men’s cavalier attitudes toward sexual misbehavior."
He cited polls indicating that Republican ardor is on the rise. "But in five weeks, Trump’s voters won’t care as much about a Supreme Court seat as women voters care about issues that are deeper and more personal," Cross argued. "The base-energizing strategy took a very ugly turn this week, as some Republicans followed Trump’s shameful lead in mocking and attacking Kavanaugh’s chief accuser.”
Of course, revving the base is big in any election. But so is broadening the base. I don't see Trump-Boof boorishness winning many independent and swing voter hearts and minds.
Nor do I see Trump, McConnell and the GOP's other grumpy old men scoring points beyond the base by belittling Ford and condescendingly suggesting she's "mixed up" -- clumsy code for "she's a liar."
Before Boof, Democrats were already sky high about the party's election day prospects, even in the Red State Bluegrass State. I suspect Boof has booted them into the stratosphere.
True, Trump carried all but two counties in 2016—Jefferson (“Liberal Louisville”) and Fayette (slightly less liberal Lexington). He pocketed almost 63 percent of the vote.
Since, Gov. Matt Bevin—Kentucky’s proto-Trump—and the Trumpian-Republican House and Senate have riled big batches of voters, including more than a few who were willing to take a chance on Bevin and Trump.
There's at least some buyer's remorse among union members and teachers who voted for Bevin (and Trump). "I drank the Kool-Aid," a western Kentucky teacher said of the governor. "I won't make that mistake again."
In 2017, GOP lawmakers zeroed in on organized labor, passing union-busting “right to work” and prevailing wage repeal measures at warp speed. Bevin couldn't wait to ink both bills.
In the 2018 session, egged on by the governor, they targeted pensions for teachers and other public employees, including police and firefighters. As big as the 2017 union protests in Frankfort were, the ones this year were bigger. (Union members helped swell the throngs.)
Concluded Suetholz, who helped organize Saturday’s “Move ‘em out, vote ‘em out” rally in Frankfort: “But it is a sad day when a woman comes forward, a woman who has nothing to gain from coming forward, and is totally decimated, left in fear for her life, and has to relocate her family, all because she just wanted to tell the story of what happened to her.”
Go ahead. Accuse me of whistling past the graveyard. But I'll stake January's Social Security check that Boof's bile and Trump's “shameful lead in mocking and attacking” Ford will carry more weight in Kentucky than McConnell's poor-little-Boof bleats.