The Other Side of the Leftward Drift
A few years ago, I speculated:
The leftward drift of formerly-conservative Supreme Court Justices (discussed here) can be explained fairly easily. Much of the time, conservative is a synonym for “willing to crack down on people who are Not Like Us.” When such a conservative becomes a Supreme Court Justice, the people who are Like Us changes from the middle classes to the political activist class and the people who Not Like Us changes from the lower classes to state legislatures.We now see the flip side of that: We have just confirmed a Supreme-Court Justice who was faced with some of the same tactics used to crack down on people who are Not Like Us: multiple charges so maybe one would stick, threats of draconian penalties in case of failure to cooperate, potential charges for allegedly-false statements, and of course trusting polygraphs. That may immunize him against the leftward drift. Kavanaugh may even be surprisingly liberal on defendant's rights.
On the other hand, don't count on that last.
