By now it’s pretty clear that the Republican party has become a culture wars grievance machine. They are no longer interested in governing. At all. They are just interested in scoring political points (“owning the libs”) and firing up their base.

One could really see this in stark relief during the nomination hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson.

In terms of substance, the Republicans couldn’t lay a glove on her.  The party of Matt Gaetz tried to paint her as soft on child pornographers, which is transparently ridiculous. In her career as a judge, the woman has written nearly 600 opinions. And that’s all they could come up with.

And they are still airing their grievances about the confirmation hearing of Amy Coney Barrett and especially Brett Kavanaugh. Of course, the crime at the Kavanaugh hearing was not that the Democrats surprised Kavanaugh with Christine Blasey Ford, the crime was that Kavanaugh lied under oath and that the FBI never conducted a proper investigation.

I mean, I don’t know that Kavanaugh should have been disqualified for what he might have done when he was 17 years old. He was never convicted of it. But he should have been disqualified for lying under oath. Kavanaugh tried to maintain the absurd position that Ford was sexually assaulted — but by someone other than him — as if Ford couldn’t recognize someone that she had believed to be a good friend.

I’ve written about this previously, about why Kavanaugh’s defense was transparently ridiculous.

Nor was it unfair of Democrats to ask Amy Coney Barrett about her membership in a parachurch organization like the People of Praise, which is an explicitly anti-abortion group.

Hardly any Republican Senator asked questions related to Brown Jackson’s qualifications. They spent virtually their entire time trying to paint her as soft on crime, while scoring political points.