“This confirmation process has become a national disgrace. The Constitution gives the Senate an important role in the confirmation process, but you have replaced advice and consent with search and destroy.

Since my nomination in July, there’s been a frenzy on the left to come up with something, anything to block my confirmation. Shortly after I was nominated, the Democratic Senate leader said he would, quote, “oppose me with everything he’s got.” A Democratic senator on this committee publicly — publicly referred to me as evil — evil. Think about that word. It’s said that those who supported me were, quote, “complicit in evil.” Another Democratic senator on this committee said, quote, “Judge Kavanaugh is your worst nightmare.” A former head of the Democratic National Committee said, quote, “Judge Kavanaugh will threaten the lives of millions of Americans for decades to come.”

I understand the passions of the moment, but I would say to those senators, your words have meaning. Millions of Americans listen carefully to you. Given comments like those, is it any surprise that people have been willing to do anything to make any physical threat against my family, to send any violent e-mail to my wife, to make any kind of allegation against me and against my friends. To blow me up and take me down.

You sowed the wind for decades to come. I fear that the whole country will reap the whirlwind.

The behavior of several of the Democratic members of this committee at my hearing a few weeks ago was an embarrassment. But at least it was just a good old-fashioned attempt at Borking.

Those efforts didn’t work. When I did at least OK enough at the hearings that it looked like I might actually get confirmed, a new tactic was needed.

Some of you were lying in wait and had it ready. This first allegation was held in secret for weeks by a Democratic member of this committee, and by staff. It would be needed only if you couldn’t take me out on the merits.

When it was needed, this allegation was unleashed and publicly deployed over Dr. Ford’s wishes. And then — and then as no doubt was expected — if not planned — came a long series of false last-minute smears designed to scare me and drive me out of the process before any hearing occurred.

Crazy stuff. Gangs, illegitimate children, fights on boats in Rhode Island. All nonsense, reported breathlessly and often uncritically by the media.

This has destroyed my family and my good name. A good name built up through decades of very hard work and public service at the highest levels of the American government.

This whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election. Fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record. Revenge on behalf of the Clintons. And millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups.

This is a circus. The consequences will extend long past my nomination. The consequences will be with us for decades. This grotesque and coordinated character assassination will dissuade competent and good people of all political persuasions, from serving our country.

And as we all know, in the United States political system of the early 2000s, what goes around comes around.”

—Brett Kavanaugh, speaking before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on September 27, 2018.

Rancorous, aggrieved, conspiratorial. Brett Kavanaugh’s tribal embrace of Republican Party talking points and his manic rage toward Democrats, Democratic Senators on the Judiciary Committee, “the left,” “left-wing opposition groups,” and the Clintons couldn’t be clearer.

Until 2006, when he was placed on the appellate court by George W. Bush, Kavanaugh was a partisan political operative. His appointment was a reward for his loyal partisanship. Kavanaugh’s career highlights up to that point: “He worked for independent counsel Kenneth Starr and laid out the grounds in 1998 for impeaching President Bill Clinton; he acted on behalf of Bush in the Florida recount in the 2000 presidential race; he promoted conservative judicial nominees as Bush’s associate counsel; and as Bush’s staff secretary, he helped shape presidential policies.” Oh, and he was also “pro bono counsel in the Elián González affair.”

Clarence Thomas – who also faced credible charges of sexual misconduct at the time of his nomination and the only member of the majority in Bush v. Gore still on the court – and Samuel Alioto – who mouthed “Not true” during President Obama’s 2010 State of the Union – may harbor partisan grievances toward Democrats and almost certainly identify with the Republican Party as newly installed Justice Kavanaugh does. They may be, as is sometimes said of members of the court, ‘politicians in robes.’ But neither of them, nor any other SCOTUS nominee in our history, has directed such bitter acrimony towards the opposition political party at a confirmation hearing – or any other public setting.

In his written testimony, Kavanaugh crossed a line that has never before been crossed by a Justice of the Supreme Court. No list of Republican grievances – even stretching back more than three decades to the Senate’s rejection of Robert Bork’s nomination in 1987; no complaints about process, or timing, or the presumption of innocence; no excuses that critics have “destroyed” his family; no claims of a grand Democratic conspiracy; no appeals to Kavanaugh’s conduct on the appellate court; no nod to his judicial qualifications – no whataboutism of any kind can change the simple, evident fact that Kavanaugh’s words and deportment were unprecedented.

At a time of extraordinary political polarization, on the plain meaning of his words and straightforward observation of his demeanor, Kavanaugh harbors deep animosity toward the opposition political party. With his confirmation by the Republican majority in the U.S. Senate, he brings illegitimacy to the nation’s highest court.

Count this as another institutional and governing norm that Republicans have deliberately trashed for (what is often short-term political advantage, but in this case is long-term – perhaps several generations’ long) political advantage.

Image is a screen grab from the C-SPAN video of Kavanaugh’s testimony.