Ace of Spades: Sean Davis, Rush Limbaugh: Republicans Can Either Confirm Kavanaugh or Lose the Senate in November

I don't think Republicans want to hold either chamber of Congress; many Republicans prefer being like Ben Sasse, having no power whatsoever except to burble up baby-talk homilies that he can quote in fundraising letters.

Having power is scary -- you are forced to make decisions that actually have consequences, and those consequences may involve the leftwing media saying mean things about you.

So it's better to be a Controlled Opposition. They don't want actual power, which is a hard thing to have; they just want position, privilege, prestige and perks.

Since these dirtbags, sell-outs, and corporate shills prefer being in the minority, I say vote to keep them in power to spite them. Make them squirm.

The rubber is about to meet the road for Senate Republicans. They have a simple choice: they can vote to confirm Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, thereby ending the baseless and unsubstantiated Democrat- and media-fueled smear campaign against him, or they can kiss House and Senate majorities goodbye for the next decade, if not longer.

In case the election of one Donald J. Trump was not enough to compel the D.C. Republican establishment swamp creatures to wipe the muck from their eyes and see what's happening with their own constituents, Republican voters have had enough of feckless do-nothings whose careers consist of little more than not doing everything they promised to do.

Give us the House, the Senate, and the White House, they said, and we'll repeal Obamacare. Give us power across the major elected branches, and we’ll secure the border, they promised. With a Republican president in the White House and a Republican majority in the Senate, we’ll confirm the most conservative Supreme Court nominees you can imagine, they claimed.

Yet here we are. Obamacare is still on the books, and a wall is still not on the border. The only compelling reason left for Republicans to continue voting for Republicans is the confirmation of conservative jurists to fill the federal judiciary. The confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch was nice, but it changed nothing, as he replaced the staunchly conservative Antonin Scalia. Gorsuch's appointment merely maintained the status quo.

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Republican lawmakers have to understand that their voters have zero patience for their excuses for not doing what they promised. It's why they elected Trump in the first place. Republican senators failed to repeal Obamacare after promising to do so for years. That was strike one. They've steadfastly refused to secure the border, let alone build a barrier along the most porous sections of the nation’s border with Mexico. That was strike two.

A refusal to vote to confirm Kavanaugh in the face of a blatantly obvious Democrat smear campaign, orchestrated in concert with a compliant and obscenely partisan national media, will be strike three, and there will be no more at-bats. I have spent a career working in and covering politics, and I have never witnessed the kind of anger among rank-and-file GOP voters generated from a combination of the unsubstantiated Democrat attacks on Kavanaugh and the flaccid response of emasculated Republicans.