Trump's three Supreme Court appointees are not "home runs."

DeSantis would likely do better.

Hugh Hewitt’s interview with Ron DeSantis includes this exchange about the Supreme Court:

HH: Now in terms of the judges that you will bring to bear on this, former President Trump hit three home runs with his Supreme Court appointments. Are you going to make the same kind of pledge to the Republicans as you go around the country that your judges will be like the Trump judges?

RD: Well, actually, I would say we’ll do better than that. I mean, I respect the three appointees he did, but none of those three are at the same level of Justices Thomas and Justice Alito. I think they are the gold standard, and so my justices will be along the lines of a Sam Alito and a Clarence Thomas. And in Florida, I inherited a very liberal state supreme court, maybe the most liberal in the country, very activist. But I was able to replace three of the four liberals my first month in office with conservative justices. I’ve since been able to make a number of appointments since then. So we now have the most conservative state supreme court in the country. And so I think we have a really good track record on doing that. And in fact, two of my supreme court picks in my first year of office were elevated to the 11th Circuit by President Donald Trump.

(Emphasis added)

If anything, DeSantis’ answer is too respectful to Trump’s appointees. Neil Gorsuch, probably the best of the three, reached the bizarre conclusion that Congress, in 1964, banned employment discrimination against gays, lesbians, and transgendered individuals. He reached the equally bizarre conclusion that much of Eastern Oklahoma belongs to Indian tribes for purposes of the Major Crimes Act.

Brett Kavanaugh, the worst of the three, is very far from a “home run.” I’m not sure he’s even an extra-base hit.

Kavanaugh does not vote consistently with Alito and Thomas in the tough cases. Instead, he’s apt to join the three liberal Justices.

He did so recently in two major cases. In the Alabama redistricting case, he joined the three libs and the Chief Justice to reject a plan that didn’t carve out a “safe” congressional district for a black to win. George Will attacks the decision here.

And in a recent environmental law case challenging the EPA’s regulatory authority, he broke with all five Republican-appointed Justices to disagree with their standard for limiting the scope of the Clean Water Act’s definition of wetlands. Here’s Hugh Hewitt on the subject.

When Trump ran for president in 2016, he criticized George W. Bush for appointing John Roberts to the court, and Ted Cruz for backing Roberts. It’s true that, in his present incarnation, Roberts is a disappointment to conservatives. But Roberts was a solidly conservative Justice for his first six years on the bench, and remained pretty reliable for several more years after his Obamacare ruling in 2012.

Kavanaugh has been on the Court for less than five years. He’s already voting as a center-right jurist, not a conservative.

There’s little doubt that if Trump were in DeSantis’ position and DeSantis in Trump’s, Trump would be ripping DeSantis over the Kavanaugh nomination. But I’m fine with the way DeSantis is playing this.

There’s nothing much to be gained by attacking Kavanaugh, who still garners sympathy from Republicans due to the vicious last-minute attacks Senate Democrats launched against him during the confirmation process. And Kavanaugh did vote with the four solid conservative Justices in the abortion case. (Let’s see what he does in the term-defining Harvard race-based preferences case.)

Thus, DeSantis’ answer to Hewitt is a good one. Rather than attacking one or more Trump appointee, it’s enough to inform voters that the three don’t measure up to “gold standard” Justices Thomas and Alito, and to tout the strong conservatism of the Florida Supreme Court justices he has appointed.