Kavanaugh, GOP fight back
WASHINGTON — Republicans mounted a combative, coordinated drive Monday to salvage Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination as they fought to keep a second woman’s allegation of long-ago sexual misconduct from derailing his confirmation. President Donald Trump leapt to his defense, the Senate’s top Republican accused Democrats of a “smear campaign” and an emotional Kavanaugh declared “I’m not going anywhere.”
In the run-up to an appearance by Kavanaugh and his main accuser at a dramatic Senate hearing Thursday, the Republicans embraced their newly aggressive stance with his nomination dangling precariously. The similar tones and wording they used suggested a concerted effort to undermine the women’s claims, portray an image of unity among GOP senators and press ahead to a confirmation vote.
Trump called the accusations “totally political” and among “the single-most unfair, unjust things to happen to a candidate for anything.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., angrily accused Democrats of slinging “all the mud they could manufacture.”
Unintimidated, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, retorted, “If you really believe they are a smear job, why don’t you call for FBI investigation?” Schumer accused the Republicans of “a rush job to avoid the truth.”
Trump has made clear he won’t order an FBI investigation of the allegations. And McConnell said that Thursday’s Judiciary Committee hearing would proceed and that full Senate consideration would follow “in the near future,” though he mentioned no date.
In a letter to the committee, which plans the climactic hearing featuring Kavanaugh and his first accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, the nominee accused his opponents of launching “smears, pure and simple.”
In an unusual strategy for a Supreme Court nominee, Kavanaugh, 53, now a judge Protesters sit and chant against Judge Brett Kavanaugh as Capitol Hill police officers make arrests Monday outside the office of Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. Collins is considered a key swing vote in any confirmation of Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court. Brett Kavanaugh, appearing with this wife, Ashley Estes Kavanaugh, answers questions during a Fox News interview Monday in Washington.
on the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals, also sat for an interview along with his wife late Monday on the conservative-friendly Fox News Channel.
Careful not to assail Ford but firm in his denial, he said, “I am not questioning and have not questioned that perhaps Dr. Ford at some point in her life was sexually assaulted by someone at some place, but what I know is I’ve never sexually assaulted anyone.”
“I’m not going to let false accusations drive us out of this process, and we’re looking for a fair process where I can be heard and defend my integrity, my lifelong record,” he said in an excerpt released by Fox before the telecast. “My lifelong record of promoting dignity and equality for women starting with the women who knew
me when I was 14 years old. I’m not going anywhere.”
In the interview, Kavanaugh said he was a virgin in high school and did not have “anything close to sexual intercourse in high school or for many years thereafter.”
The Ford accusation has now been joined by another. On Sunday, The New Yorker magazine reported that Deborah Ramirez described a 1980s, alcohol-heavy Yale dormitory party at which she said Kavanaugh exposed himself, placed his penis in her face and caused her to touch it without her consent.
It remained unclear how three moderate Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Arizona’s Jeff Flake and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski — would react to the latest accusation. With the GOP’s Senate
control hanging on a razor-thin 51-49 margin, defections by any two Republican senators would seal Kavanaugh’s fate if all Democrats vote “no.”
Collins said investigators on the Judiciary Committee should reach out to Ramirez for an interview. But she said she has “not made a decision” about whether to vote for Kavanaugh, only that the hearing Thursday “is an important one.”
Proceeding with Kavanaugh seems to give Republicans their best shot at filling the Supreme Court vacancy — and giving the court an increasingly conservative tilt — before November’s elections, when GOP Senate control is in play.
Even if Republicans lose their Senate majority, they still could have time to confirm a nominee in a postelection lame-duck session, but the GOP has not indicated that is under consideration.
Pushing forward with Kavanaugh has risks of its own, besides an embarrassing defeat for Trump and the GOP. His nomination and the claims of sexual misconduct dating from his teenage years have stirred up women and liberal voters whose antipathy to Republicans has already been heightened by Trump’s policies and his own fraught history of alleged sexual transgressions.