The Last Boy Scout?

Torture, Guantánamo Bay, mass surveillance: these are the questions that Brett Kavanaugh ought to have been asked. 

Not some Salem witch trial. Not some McCarthy hearing. Not some regression to the racist rape trials of the Old South. This.

But if Kavanaugh is confirmed, then not only will he have escaped this scrutiny, but the electoral damage to his supporters will last for a generation.

So what if, with his swing vote, "the Supreme Court would not strike down conservative legislation"? What conservative legislation? They are not going to be in a position to enact any. (Nor, by the way, would any of it ever have been about abortion.)

Is Kavanaugh their only possible nominee? Their determination to push him through, at catastrophic electoral damage to themselves, would seem to suggest that the Republican Party and the conservative movement had indeed arrived at that sorry pass.