Confirmation teetering on slim margin
GOP sens. waver in support
A handful of Senate votes could make or break Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court after Christine Blasey Ford gave her highly anticipated testimony of alleged sexual assault yesterday.
Republican Sens. Susan Collins, Jeff Flake, Lisa Murkowski and Bob Corker have remained noncommittal, saying they were waiting on yesterday’s hearing to determine how they will vote.
The fence-sitting Republicans are toeing the party line on Kavanaugh.
Sen. Lindsey Graham said at yesterday’s hearing, “To my Republican colleagues, if you vote no, you are legitimizing the most despicable thing I’ve ever seen in my time in politics.”
Asked whether there were signs of Republicans wavering in their support of Kavanaugh, Sen. John Thune, the third-ranking Republican, paused briefly before saying “no.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said all week that Republicans will turn to a committee vote on Kavanaugh today, after the yesterday’s hearing. They hope for a roll call by the full Senate — where they have a scant 51-49 majority — early next week.
The stakes for both political parties — and the country — are high. Republicans are pushing to seat Kavanaugh before the November midterms, when Senate control could fall to the Democrats and a replacement Trump nominee could have even greater difficulty. Kavanaugh’s ascendance to the high court could help lock in a conservative majority for a generation, influencing rulings on abortion, regulation, the environment and more.
The Senate Judiciary Committee — 11 Republicans and 10 Democrats — heard from just two witnesses yesterday: Kavanaugh, a federal appeals court judge who has long been eyed for the Supreme Court, and Blasey Ford, a California psychology professor who accuses him of sexually assaulting her when they were teens. Kavanaugh has denied it.
Robert Bloom, a professor at Boston College law school, described Blasey Ford as an “incredible” witness.
“If there are senators on the fence it seems to me that she would be very, very convincing and it might move them off the fence,” Bloom said. “My guess is she’ll have an impact. Whether that impact will result in preventing Kavanaugh from getting on the Supreme Court, I don’t know, but she definitely is having an impact.”
Constitutional lawyer Harvey Silverglate said, “There’s no way of determining with any assurance what happened at a party, whose memory is more accurate, who is telling the truth and who isn’t. I would have hoped that the decision as to whether to confirm Kavanaugh would be decided on the basis of what kind of Supreme Court justice he would be, but that doesn’t seem to be very important.”