Tilted
..
Of course the decision was going to generate outrage from the left. The issue is timing, not whether or not to generate outrage.Then we disagree. The only reason I can think of as a motive, is to generate outrage. And I think that, because - surprise - it's precisely what happened.
It is the single most used issue when it comes to opposition to SCOTUS appointments and national elections - that they'll overturn Roe v. Wade. I've been hearing it for at least forty years - do not support this appointment, do not approve this SCOTUS nominee, do not vote for this governor or Senator or President. It's so frequent, it's an expectation during confirmation hearings.
And - it works. As Paul Crewe says in "The Longest Yard" - "Worked once, should work again".
If you want people to act - piss them off, get them afraid.
Conservatives are so used to being let down by conservative SCOTUS members - releasing it to generate animus against a conservative judge? Been there, done that. Happens so often, it wouldn't even make FOX.
This was an issue I would think most conservatives were already concerned about heading into the 2022 elections. I know it's something I and most of the conservatives I talked with were concerned about; it was perhaps the most concerning variable. We knew the Dobbs decision would be coming out, likely only about 4 months before the election, and that a decision to overturn Roe would likely significantly harm Republican chances.
The only thing the leak did was move the start of the outrage 7 weeks further from the election. That probably wasn't going to matter a lot, but to the extent it did it wasn't likely to help liberals. From their perspective, the closer to the election the better. The end of June, when the opinion was likely to come out, was going to be quite fortuitous timing.
As for generating animus among conservatives toward a conservative Justice, that's not what I suggested as a possible motivation. The outrage was always going to come from the left unless Justice Kavanaugh changed his vote. If that happened, then yes... there would almost certainly have been considerable outrage from conservatives. How could there not be on an issue this contentious? To have what many had been working for for so long stripped away because a Justice responded to public outrage and changed his vote? Justice Kavanaugh is already getting a bit of a reputation as not being a real conservative based on some of his votes, his name would be mud in a lot of circles if it was made so clear that he actually changed his vote in a case as big as this. For a large portion of the conservative base, this is the case that matters. Getting a Court that would finally overturn Roe v Wade was the whole point of all the work. It was, in some ways, the end game.
But, again, even if we discount the inward-facing possible motivations, the outward-facing motivation you see as the only possible motivation gives the conservative side at least as much reason for the leak. Liberals were going to get their outrage regardless.