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Raging Moderate
Q. What’s the skinny on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh for Supreme Court Justice?
A. Chaos. Confusion. Mutual accusations of partisan politics. Exasperation. Pique. Rage. Intimidation. Slack-jawed lunacy. You know, the usual skinny. Standard operating skinny.
Q. How long did it take after Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement for things to get ugly?
A. Minutes. Seconds. Nano-seconds. A jiffy.
Q. Is there expected to be a confirmation fight?
A. Is the sky blue? Do ducks have webbed feet? Are the stones in the pockets of a dead mobster at the bottom of the East River round?
Q. Hunh?
A. That means yes.
Q. Okay. At the risk of sounding politically incorrect, doesn’t the term, “Justice Brett” kind of ring weird?
A. You got that right. Like saying Sister Mary Cinnamon. The Duchess of South Dakota. The John Goodman Swimsuit Calendar.
Q. President Donald Trump?
A. You said it, not me.
Q. Besides being 28 years younger, how does the 53-year-old Kavanaugh compare to the justice he’s replacing?
A. He was a clerk for Kennedy. So he’s got that going for him. Rumor has it Kennedy only agreed to retire if Kavanaugh got the gig.
Q. So that whole job search and short list thing was just a sham?
A. One more example of the Oval Office Apprentice producing another exciting episode.
Q. What are the major differences between outgoing and incoming?
A. Anthony Kennedy was the swing vote on the Court, sometimes siding with liberals, other times with conservatives. The only swing Justice Kavanaugh is expected to provide will be from the near far right to far far right. If he were your father, you would have been grounded for infinity since the age of 12 for stealing cookies.
Q. How will Democrats fight the confirmation?
A. That’s the problem. They seem to be bouncing between multiple plans.
Q. What’s their initial instinct?
A. To cite the McConnell Rule, and follow the Kentucky Senator’s 2016 precedent that a vacant SCOTUS seat should not be filled during an election year and we should let the people decide.
Q. Well, that seems solid, doesn’t it?
A. Well, now the Republicans maintain that a presidential election is much different than a midterm election, but many suspect what they really mean is that a Republican nomination is much different than a Democratic nomination.
Q. Are there any fallback arguments?
A. One is to mobilize support based on his opposition to abortions rights.
Q. How anti-abortion is he?
A. Hard to tell. He claims to have no preconceived notions about it.
Q. Then he’s be the only person on the face of the planet who doesn’t. Anything else?
A. Other Democrats are worried he’s Trump’s “Get Out of Jail Free Card” due to Kavanaugh authoring an opinion that said presidents are way too busy with affairs of state to attend to something so trifling as a criminal proceeding. And you can imagine Trump heartily agreeing in a tweet from a cart on the sixth fairway of one of his Scottish golf courses.
Q. Any other cunning strategies in the works?
A. The plan the Democrats are most likely to follow is to fight amongst themselves until they forget what they’re fighting about and then lose focus. You know, the standard operating skinny.
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Copyright 2018, Will Durst, distributed by the Cagle Cartoons Inc. syndicate.
Will Durst is an award-winning, nationally acclaimed columnist, comic and former sod farmer in New Berlin, Wisconsin. For a calendar of personal appearances, including his new one-man show, “Durst Case Scenario,” please visit willdurst.com.
