JAY COST: In the Kavanaugh Hearings, Democrats Break Norms to Gain Power.

What grates me about this recent talk of norms is that that efforts to police norms have of late been notoriously one-sided, mainly serving the purpose of advancing Democratic political priorities. For instance, in 2011, President Barack Obama invited Paul Ryan, who was then the chairman of the House Budget Committee, to a speech on entitlements. At the speech, Obama blasted Ryan’s economic proposals as “a vision of our future that is deeply pessimistic,” and he proceeded to rip them to shreds in a highly partisan fashion, with Ryan in attendance, at the invitation of the White House.

Was this a violation of the “norms” of government? Yes. Did liberal pundits and their supposedly nonpartisan friends in the mainstream media blast the president for said violation? Not especially.

That is one of the problem with policing norms. They are not written down, so it is easy to be sensitive to the violation of norms that negatively affect your side while shrugging off those violations that positively affect your side.

Which brings me to Brett Kavanaugh.

In the last few years, I have rarely seen a more egregious violation of norms than what I have witnessed in the past 15 days.

Plus: “And continuously on Twitter, I have watched journalists, in blatant and open advocacy against Brett Kavanaugh, abandon the norms that they usually like to tout.”

I think it was Ace who noted a few years ago that the press has gone from merely biased to nakedly partisan — to shrinking audiences and plummeting trust, I’d add.