Our concerns about Kavanaugh continue, that said, American Family Association has decided to hold fire: ( we note there is a lot of sincere knowledgeable horsepower behind Kavanaugh)
AFA Statement on Kavanaugh nomination to SCOTUS
Tuesday, July 10, 2018
Dear Lorrie,
AFA has opposed the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S Supreme Court for some very valid reasons. We are deeply concerned about how he might ultimately rule on issues related to abortion and religious liberty. For these reasons, we consider this nomination to represent a four-star appointment when it could have been five-star.
However, after hearing the concerns of some of our supporters, and after hearing the passionate defense of Judge Kavanaugh by many we consider to be friends in the pro-life movement, we are willing to let this process play out. We eagerly await the confirmation hearings when we hope to get clarification from Judge Kavanaugh on aspects related to our concerns.
At this time, we have no plans to fight President Trump on this nomination. He has appointed a lot of good federal judges already and we look forward to many more. We hope that our concerns prove to be unfounded.
Thank you,
Tim Wildmon, President
American Family Association
See online version of the alert here.
This article and a comment by a reader at RedState have insights that makes us queasy:
If You’re Worried About Brett Kavanaugh and Roe v. Wade, Consider This
Comment at RedState article:
mountaingoat •
My impression of Brett is that he is a careerist in the establishment who would do whatever it takes to get the job. Republicans in the post Souter years have vetted nominees’ past rulings very carefully. Thus it was in Brett’s self interest to apply an originalist approach to his rulings on the DC circuit, which he did quite consistently. The opinions in his rulings might be entirely sincere, however the incentives for him to rule in this way as a circuit court judge are different from the incentives to rule in this way on the Supreme Court. I think it is more instructive to look at the small number of cases where he deviated from originalist principles.
Kavanaugh ruled on the Obamacare case before it went to Roberts and the Supreme Court. I think he and Roberts both thought the individual mandate was unconstitutional. They both punted on striking it down, but they punted in different ways. Kavanaugh punted by arguing that the court did not yet have jurisdiction to hear the case because the penalty was a “tax” that had not yet been paid, an argument conservatives on the Supreme Court disagreed with. His reasoning tries to be too clever by half, but it makes more sense from the perspective of his political self interest. If Kavanaugh had written an opinion upholding Obamacare, that would jeopardize his chances of being nominated to the Supreme Court. On the other hand if Kavanaugh had written an opinion arguing that the individual mandate was unconstitutional, he would be very unlikely to be confirmed if Democrats controlled the Senate. Recall that Democrats controlled the Senate in 2011 when Kavanaugh heard the case
If so then Kavanaugh was onboard with redefining Obamacare as being a tax, not simply unconstitutional.
