Kavanaugh and the Senators

Sometimes you read something that is so egregious that it just jumps out of the page at you. Erin MacArthur hit the jackpot on Wednesday. (Nashville Tennessean 9/12) Her beginning comments were typical anti-Kavanaugh, along with her appeal to Senators Alexander and Corker. Then she lobbed the bombshell. She claimed to “see the disregard of their constituents’ requests and pleas.”

Three things just leaped out of the page. The statement was arrogant. It was presumptuous. And it was ignorant. (No offense.) It was arrogant in the sense that only her presonal positions are important and our Senators should ignore everyone else.

It was presumptuous in that she assumed, by her language, that the majority, if not all, of the constituents were begging for the rejection of the nomination of Judge Kavanaugh. And if that was not the presumption, then the statement reflects an abysmal level of ignorance.

It is ignorant first, because not only is her opinion not the exclusive one, it is the minority one. If she does not recognize that there is not much need to proceed with a logical refutation. And the ignorance extends to an understanding of our representative government. Our elected envoys to Congress are not ciphers or atomatons who merely accumulate the numbers of support or rejection for a given subject, and vote accordingly.

This is a federal republic. The representatives are not slaves or mere repeaters of the majority opinion. They are selected based on their world view and expressed values to act in the behalf of their constituents. And to reject Judge Kavanaugh based on two or three specific opinions misses the import of the position. The American Bar Association gave Judge Kavanaugh a unanimous, well qualified rating.

This is a lifetime appointment and he will deal with literally hundreds if not thousands of issues. To generate an opinion based on two or three specific issues is very short sighted. And this is particularly germane since one of her complaints was a hypothetical instance.

Her chief objection was about “women’s health access,” which is double speak for abortion. It is also called “women’s health care.” Abortion harms many women, as illustrated by several investigations. And in roughly half of the instances, abortion murders a woman/girl. How can protecting the “right to terminate” a female be protecting women’s health interests?

The final shot was that we, constituents, need Senators Corker and Alexander to act in their best interest. Not sure if the interest here is the C-group, or the Senators, but either way, Judge Kavanaugh seems to be well suited. He is their constituents’ best interest.