Dissent: The Radicalization of the Republican Party and its capture of The Court,

 

Jackie Calmes, “Dissent: The Radicalization of the Republican Party and its capture of The Court,” 12 Hatchette Book Group, 2021, 416 pp. .

Mona Charen on The Bulwark Podcast recommended this book.

Los Angeles Times editor Calmes tracks the party’s rightward shift alongside Brett Kavanaugh’s career beginning in High School and his “Forrest Gump” like presence* and involvement in most rightwing provocations of those forty years, from the Reagan revolution to the Tea Party and Trumpism.  She traces the creation and growing influence of the Federalist Society, which Kavanaugh joined in 1988, and details his work assisting independent counsel Kenneth Starr in his investigation of the Clintons, as well as serving as White House staff secretary to George W. Bush.   

*Clinton’s impeachment

*Jeb Bush’s statewide voucher paying parents to send children to parochial schools.

*Elian Gonzalez ( 5 years old) custody fight

*Recount fight in election of Bush vs Gore

*Opposed the ‘Chevron deference’ despite it being a Reagan EPA rule. Pg. 132

GOP leadership, only cared that Kavanaugh was a conservative Christian who, in his work as a federal judge, “predictably favored corporations, police, and executive power”—as long as the executive power was wielded by a Republican.  Character no longer mattered.

Calmes also offers insight into Stanford University research psychologist Christine Blasey Ford’s decision to come forward with sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh, and makes a convincing argument that Kavanaugh misled Congress about his knowledge of the Bush administration’s “illegal surveillance and torture policies” and a Republican aide’s theft of thousands of emails and memos sent by Democratic senators and their aides in the early 2000s. Calmes comprehensively explains the mechanics of the “ascendant conservative legal movement.”

My Notes:

Pg. ix:  Trump’s election victory while a surprise even to him, was no political aberration.  Trump’s rise in the Republican Party was the logical result of the party’s ever-rightward, populist, and antigovernment evolution that had begun as early as 1978 when author Calmes began her career.

Pg. xiii:  The author told President George Bush jr. that history would be kind to his Father’s accomplishments:  the Father had passed the clean air and water laws and the Disabilities Act, brought an end to Reagan’s covert wars in Central America, brokered the end of the Cold War and most of all, despite his 1988 antitax promise, had signed the landmark 1990 deficit reduction agreement that contributed significantly to the balanced budgets and prosperity the nation enjoyed at that moment and through the Clinton years.  “Interesting” replied Bush jr.  He followed in his governing with deep tax cuts and spending increases, the annual deficits and mounting debt of the Reagan era returned.  The federal debt tripled during Reagan’s reign (p. 23).

Pg. 30f:  By Reagan’s time, the Right’s focus was on the culture war issues--abortion, gun rights, religion, affirmative action, gay rights, and more—as much as on law enforcement and business regulations.  

In over forty years from 1968 to 2009, just two Democratic-appointed nominees joined the Supreme Court—Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer in Clinton’s first term.

By the time of George W. Bush’s presidency, the most important criterion for vetting judicial Republican candidates was affiliation with the Federalist Society, or at least its blessing.  In 2005, the society for the first time formally supported a nominee, Bush’s choice of Roberts to replace Rehnquist as chief justice. 

Pg. 53f:  The saga of Bork, a judge on the D.C. Circuit Court, marked the first time that the philosophy of a Supreme Court nominee, rather than his or her integrity and qualifications, was the basis for rejection.

Pg. 55:  By 1987, Republican message-meisters were newly abetted by conservative radio talk-show host beginning to proliferate nationwide.  The Bork Debate was right on the heels of the Reagan administration’s repeal of the “Fairness Doctrine,” which for years mandated that broadcasters airing opinions give free time to opposing views.  Now Rush Limbaugh could say what he wanted, unchallenged.

 

 

 

 

 

Pg. 150f:  On February 13, 2016, Justice Scalia died.  McConnell immediately recognized what  a fight for control of the nation’s highest court would mean for mobilizing conservative voters in that election year.  Obama’s pick, if confirmed, could give the left a majority for years to come.  Also, McConnell believed he had to immediately make the announcement before Cruz made such a statement in the debates and then split Republicans on the issue as so many did not like Cruz. 

Pg. 146:  Beginning in 1917 a tradition had arisen that if a home-state senator withheld  the  ‘blue-slip’ the nomination of anyone from that state to a court position was buried.  In the fall of 2017 McConnell that the Judiciary Committee would no longer honor the blue slip tradition.  Democrats could no longer block nominees from their states by withholding their slips.

Pg. 147:  After five years of obstruction by McConnell against Obama’s court nominees, the Senate majority leader, Reid, had had enough.  On November 21, 2013, he resorted to the nuclear option, effectively banning filibusters of presidential nominees other than those for the Supreme Court.  Three years later when Trump was president, McConnell, now the Senate Majority leader, ended the filibuster for Supreme Court Justices as well.

Pg. 385:  On July 9, 2020, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in both the House and Vance cases that the president’s personal records could be subpoenaed for criminal investigations or congressional oversight but the records would not be available until after the 2020 election.  Trump’s two appointees, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, were in the majority