If Republicans confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court sometime in the coming weeks, despite the troubling sexual misconduct allegations that have surfaced, they will send the United States tumbling further into a wide-ranging and potentially destructive judicial crisis. The GOP's ruthless determination to use procedural gimmicks to entrench their power on state and national courts for a generation will invite (and fully justify) further escalation from Democrats and send the country careening toward an ugly standoff over the legitimacy of the courts themselves. The GOP's abuse of its power of judicial appointments is so widespread at this point as to feel commonplace, and it goes far beyond the behavior of Vichy Republicans in Congress.