John Hayward

Genuine conservatives who were (and remain) skeptical of Trump finally get why others voted for him. Scales are lifted from the eyes of people who stayed home, threw their votes away on protest candidates, or even thought President Hillary would have been better for conservatism.

You can't do anything about the diehard NeverTrumpers, the grifters, and the closet liberals who call themselves Republicans, of course. But the Kavanaugh battle is an enormous clarifying moment for people who forgot how actively malevolent and hungry for power Democrats are.

Look at the past couple of weeks with honest conservative eyes and tell me with a straight face that putting the Democrats in charge until 2020 would have been "better for conservatism" because everybody could be honest, principled, and powerless critics of the Avenatti Party.

And think also of how many Republican leaders would have crumbled under the Democrat assault in a way Donald Trump did not. The reason Dems are so shell-shocked right now is that their sleazy tactics were supposed to WORK. Republicans don't stand up to these media hurricanes.

Think back to the early days of the attack on Kavanaugh. Remember the "conservatives" and "very smart friends" who all said the smart play was to capitulate to Democrats, immediately dump Kavanaugh, and nominate someone Dems approved of so they could be confirmed quickly?

And consider how this entire battle has been CULTURAL, emotional, and purely political. Law and reason went out the window right away. Democrats ordered us to throw away the presumption of innocence and burden of proof in Minute One!

Too many of the other GOP candidates in 2016 were unprepared to fight that kind of battle. They came from a tradition of genteel statesmanship, looking for intellectual jousts with a loyal opposition of well-meaning but mistaken colleagues across the aisle.

I wish we lived in a country with that kind of Democrat Party, but it should be painfully clear to everyone right now that we don't. It's a raw scramble for power, no holds barred, no principles sacred to the Democrats, and they're even okay with a bit of the old ultraviolence.

I'm not saying Trump was the only Republican leader who could fight that kind of battle, but he clearly is willing to fight it, and act aggressively where most Repubs are prone to backing away from terrain where they think Dems will fight most fiercely.

And with that understanding of what the Democrat party really is, it should become clear why conservatives with reservations about Trump voted for him instead of staying home or casting protest votes. This is the fight they knew they were in all along.

Show me a conservative who isn't even slightly surprised by how low the Democrats have gone ever since Feinstein pulled her late hit on Kavanaugh, and I'll show you a Trump voter - if not in 2016, then definitely in 2020.

The really tough division in the GOP until now has been those different views of the Democrats. You had to believe they wouldn't be all that bad in power to risk putting Hillary in the White House or babble about how giving Congress to Dems would teach Trump a much-needed lesson.