Politics & Policy
Collins and Kavanaugh: The Post-Truth Republican Party - so fraudulent, just like Medford City Hall in 2018
The senator knew the conservative base would disbelieve her or not care what she said.
Collins’s speech offered a series of ostensible rationales for her vote in favor of Kavanaugh. But her rationales were reminiscent of Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell feigning outrage over the perfidious delaying tactics of Democrats – not so long after he completely blocked the nomination of Merrick Garland.
McConnell didn’t expect his protests to be taken seriously. He was showing the Republican base, which has been conditioned by Donald Trump to savor such displays, that he could spin out an absurd falsehood in service to the cause. Remember the Russian claim that assassins dispatched with deadly toxin were actually tourists just visiting Britain to see a lovely cathedral? The open contempt for truth – a comic level of gas-lighting – is the whole point.
Collins offered some traditional partisan fare: She unwound a lengthy complaint about the involvement of liberal interest groups in a nomination process that was organized and dominated by conservative interest groups. But she anchored her speech in the vapors of Trump and McConnell’s post-truth, confirming it as the lingua franca of the entire party.
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-10-06/collins-kavanaugh-and-the-post-truth-republican-party
