Suddenly, long-term “Never Trumpers,” to their surprise and astonishment, have a strange new respect for their commander in chief. “For the first time since Donald Trump entered the political fray, I find myself grateful that he’s in it,” Bret Stephens wrote in the New York Times on Oct. 4. “I’m reluctant to admit it and astonished to say it. … I’m grateful because Trump has not backed down in the face of the slipperiness, hypocrisy and dangerous standard-setting deployed by the opponents of Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination … I’m grateful because he’s a big fat hammer fending off a razor-sharp dagger … I’m grateful because ferocious and even crass obstinacy has its uses in life.”

But step back and ask yourself just why the Never Trumpers disliked Trump in the first place in 2016, and some of the answers begin to emerge. He seemed vulgar and crass and authoritarian. The aura of violence seemed to hang over his rallies. He seemed eager to overturn settled norms.

But in the battle for Kavanaugh, it was the Democrats, the feminists, and the Left who seemed crass and vulgar and eager to overturn norms. They were truly hysterical and utterly discarded the idea that guilt has to be proven, or at least some evidence given, savaging those who referred back to this mainstay principle of the Constitution and the common law.