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There’s a reason I predicted Trump would pick Amy Coney Barrett over Brett Kavanaugh: She offered tremendous strategic advantages.
The flip side is that Kavanaugh offers relatively few advantages and quite a few vulnerabilities. But Trump’s decision, of course, likely didn’t have much to do with strategy. He had two things on his mind: criminalizing abortion and evading indictment.
Trump promised the religious right he’d only nominate pro-life justices, a clear vow to overturn Roe v Wade and pave the way to recriminalize abortion. Kavanaugh fits the bill.
No ifs, ands, or buts.
Better yet, Kavanaugh wrote a law review article that proposed passing a law to protect the president from criminal investigation or prosecution.
The biggest strategic advantage Kavanaugh offers? His indisputable qualifications.
With Barrett, the hope was that Republican Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski—who’ve wavered from the Republican line on both health care and reproductive freedom—would have had a clear, defensible reason for refusing to vote for her: her relative inexperience. Those senators will have a tougher time refusing to confirm Kavanaugh without staking their votes on health care and choice, thereby exposing themselves to attack from the right.