You know, insofar as Kavanaugh is the vote that swings the Supreme Court in the direction Republicans have promised since <checks calendar> 1980, I can legitimately understand how some older Republicans find him a bridge too far.
That sounds dry, but it's serious: If you assumed the Republican Party was the party of (sort of, this is a stretch but let's assume) fiscal responsibility and social moderation, while also keeping abortion legal, etc., with a wink and nod over the rubes' heads, you'd be livid.
Here, we have a dude who (1) does not care for the pledge kept only by some social conservatives to keep spending under control (2) doesn't give a fig for polite language and (3) is either too smart or too stupid to keep up the game on the Courts.
This is the announcement of the end of the quiet detente that kept intact an ideological tent comprised of people who wanted abortion ended, budgets controlled, and the first two constantly kicking the missing football.
With Republican foreign policy now more schizophrenic than ever, while fusionism might have some appeal to the mass of the party, the edges must necessarily tear.
I'd add a few more points that are more tangential than anything else. First, "but Gorsuch!" was always a sort of silly reply to people who voted for Trump on the theory he'd do right by the Court precisely because goshdarnit the GOP always seemed to keep status quo ante there.
Insofar as Kavanaugh works out, "BUT GORSUCH AND KAVANAUGH" is going to get a lot of applause from a tiny minority and odd looks from everyone else.
Second and relatedly, it's not altogether clear Kavanaugh would have gotten by with someone else. Counterfactuals are always stupid, but even if we assume Ayotte would still have her seat and some other Republican was at 1600, we all know he'd have been pulled.
I don't buy "Kavanaugh was yelling to perform for Trump" any more than I buy "Graham who still thinks Trump is a clod on foreign policy was yelling because Trump owns him" because I'm not stupid.
But even stipulating that, of the entire GOP field, Trump's the only one of the whole field, with the arguable exception of Ted Cruz (also widely hated for similar but hardly identical reasons) who clearly likes the taste of blood in his mouth, or the appearance of liking it.
I don't know where movement conservatives fit in the GOP now; they were a minority-to-a-plurality anyway. But lots of movement conservatives were absolutely pissed off with "sure you savage our Supreme Court nominees and we'll quietly confirm the racist eugenicist and the idiot."
So in a very real sense, this is giving a part of the party that the aforementioned Republicans always held in mild contempt *exactly what they want*: Right-of-center justices on our permanent legislature and the willingness to go to war.
Third, Republicans are temperamentally conservative even when not politically so, which is why every Republican President in my memory has had a wave of "this isn't the GOP I signed up for" even when the change is telegraphed for years ahead of time: It's still a change.
It may be a change that was promised for decades, it may be a change that was even real on paper, but it's not a change until it happens, which means it isn't something about which to get one's panties in a twist until then.
That the change is heralded by a crass and, let us be frank, pretty weird buffoon is merely salt in the wound.
