Leaks! Leaks!

Ted Cruz: "It is very, very likely a law clerk for one of the three liberal justices. . .. I have no evidence of that, I’m just making an inference."

Mitch McConnell: "By every indication, this was yet another escalation in the radical left’s ongoing campaign to bully and intimidate federal judges and substitute mob rule for the rule of law.”

Republicans officeholders and Fox News have jumped on the idea that the leak surely came from someone opposed to the pending Supreme Court decision. 

Maybe so. Someone also leaked to the Wall Street Journal last week, though, which implies the leak came from a different direction, someone trying to nudge one of the five or six anti-abortion justices either to join a six-person Alito majority or to peel off to join Chief Justice Roberts in something less sweeping. We don't know.

Nor do we know who leaked the full draft.

Huffington Post

Here is what we do know: Republican officeholders and Fox News are shocked, shocked! that someone would interfere with the government carrying out its lawful functions. It is "mob rule," as McConnell put it. The GOP recognizes that the content of the leak hurts them politically. They are acting like a dirty secret was revealed. It unleashed a political mess in the form of Republican-majority state legislatures considering abortion bans. Louisiana is moving legislation to ban treat all abortions from the moment of conception as a homicide. That would end in vitro fertilization, morning-after medications, and some forms of IUD contraception. Multiple states are moving to ban import or use of "Plan B" pills used immediately after a contraception failure. Errors happen. These laws will frighten people and hit them where they live. These laws will change sexual practices in America. 

Democrats are acting less upset about the leak, and more about the content revealed by it. That is a messaging mistake. Downplaying the leak itself is hypocritical and that message undermines the larger Democratic project of defending the institutions of government. The great risk to our republic in this moment is that Trump-led Republicans are calling Republicans RINOs and weaklings if they did their duty in the 2020 election. They openly call for a partisan result. Cheat for your team. Better to cheat than let Democrats win an election. Democrats should be deeply grateful that norms of behavior withstood that  pressure.

Cruz blames "one woke little left-wing twit."

The Supreme Court leak and the January 6 insurrection were both lawless, wrong, and dangerous. Democrats should be consistent here. Defend the law and norms. The fact that the leak likely helps them is all the more reason to condemn it. Condemning it shows that their goal is democratic process and integrity.

Republicans are shielding the various officeholders who instigated and planned the effort to overthrow the 2020 election. Trumpish Republicans are positioned as the party that wants a result and is willing to flout the law to get it. It is a bad look. A majority of Americans are turned off by it. Even within the GOP, some officeholders are beginning to act uncomfortable that Trump-style authoritarianism has gone this far. It is a "tell" that Cruz and McConnell denounce so vigorously this Court leak. They want to condemn mob rule somewhere. Since they cannot do it regarding January 6, they will do it in reference to the Court. Hypocrisy betrays a guilty conscience.

Democrats shouldn't be hypocrites either. Criticize the leak as angrily as do Republicans. It is the ethical thing to do. It is also the strategic thing to do. Democrats need to be fore-square in support of government officials playing it straight. In the 2020 election some GOP officeholders did their duty. Good for them.

Democrats need to carry that message that democratic norms are still in place. Someone, somewhere in the Supreme Court crew didn't play it straight. Shame on them.