The Kavanaugh Kult

This is an actually interesting detail in a story about J.D. Vance’s pathetic Donald Trump tribute show, two shows tonight at the Ramada Inn in Cincinnati opening for Two Jacks and a Jill:

Later that year, the furious opposition on the left to the Supreme Court nomination of Brett M. Kavanaugh was a milestone in Mr. Vance’s political shift. Mr. Vance’s wife, Usha, whom he met in law school, had clerked for Justice Kavanaugh. “Trump’s popularity in the Vance household went up substantially during the Kavanaugh fight,” Mr. Vance told a conservative group in 2019.

Although Mr. Vance has said that he came to agree with Mr. Trump’s policies on China and immigration, the most important factor in his conversion, he told Mr. Gorka in March, was a “gut” identification with Mr. Trump’s rhetorical war on America’s “elites.”

“I was like, ‘Man, you know, when Trump says the elites are fundamentally corrupt, they don’t care about the country that has made them who they are, he was actually telling the truth,’” Mr. Vance said.

(His adoption of Trump-style populism did not inhibit him from flying to the Hamptons last month for a fund-raiser with Republican captains of industry, as reported by Politico.)

First of all, the Yalie venture capitalist married to the Yalie who clerked for John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh before graduating to BigLaw is, in fact, a model of exactly who will get the material benefits from Trumpian “populism.” But second, I believe that the Kavanaugh hearings had a radicalizing effect on Vance and probably would have even had his wife not clerked for him personally. The idea that Brett Kavanaugh was entitled to the Article III judgeship of his specific choice rather than the one he already occupied, irrespective of the credibility of the charges against him or how much he lied on the witness stand, has become one of the central rationalizations of Republican elites who have become Donald Trump’s uncritical puppets.

Of course, as we know there’s a vampire plutocrat involved too:

Finally, the influence of Mr. Thiel, a founder of PayPal, whom Mr. Vance has called a “mentor to me,” appears to have been decisive in Mr. Vance’s embrace of Trumpism.

An outspoken and somewhat rare conservative in Silicon Valley, Mr. Thiel addressed the 2016 Republican convention and advised the Trump transition team. He is a fierce critic of China and global trade and a supporter of restrictionist immigration policies, and Mr. Vance has moved toward all those positions. Mr. Thiel, who did not respond to an interview request, is also paying for a super PAC for another protege, Blake Masters, in a Senate race in Arizona.

Vance’s populism is about as terrifying to America’s economic elite as a sedated kitten.