President Trump and his conservative allies now see their effort to confirm Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh as central to salvaging the Republican Party’s fortunes in the midterm elections, and hope to use the fervent liberal opposition to his nomination to the Supreme Court as a graphic example of the threat posed by a Democratic return to power in Congress.
The increasingly aggressive attacks on Judge Kavanaugh’s main accuser and the dark warnings about Democrats from his supporters are part of an effort to harness Republicans’ outrage over what they see as a Democratic scheme to steal a pivotal Supreme Court seat. …
As he campaigns for House and Senate candidates across the country, Mr. Trump has been framing the midterm elections as “a vote to reject the politics of anger, destruction and chaos,” as he said in Mississippi on Tuesday. But in that same speech he also dropped any semblance of deference toward Dr. Blasey and embraced the aggressive, no-apologies approach that many of his allies have taken. CONT.
Jeremy W. Peters & Maggie Haberman, New York Times