Kavanaugh is unpopular, has likely committed perjury, was involved in the use and distribution of stolen documents, and a bunch of other things that would each constitute sufficient reason to withdraw his nomination in normal circumstances.
Plus, the GOP already set the precedent to withhold confirmation hearings until after elections and the senate is now in play. They did this to themselves.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/christine-blasey-ford-wanted-to-flee-the-us-to-avoid-brett-kavanaugh-now-she-may-testify-against-him/2018/09/22/db942340-bdb1-11e8-8792-78719177250f_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.36707a3c40cd
To many, Kavanaugh was a respected jurist. To her, he was the teenager who had attacked her when they were in high school.
Ford had already moved 3,000 miles away from the affluent Maryland suburbs where she says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a house party — a charge he would emphatically deny. Suddenly, living in California didn’t seem far enough. Maybe another hemisphere would be. She went online to research other democracies where her family might settle, including New Zealand.
“She was like, ‘I can’t deal with this. If he becomes the nominee, then I’m moving to another country. I cannot live in this country if he’s in the Supreme Court,’ ” her husband said. “She wanted out.”
These were the lengths that Ford, a professor and mother of two, once considered to avoid revisiting one of her most troubling memories — one she’d discussed only in therapy and with her husband. Instead her deeply held secret would come to dominate the headlines, putting her and her family at the center of an explosive debate about the future of the Supreme Court.
What a lose-lose this is for Republicans, if they don't hold a hearing and confirm Brett they look super bad, if they do hold a hearing without her testifying, and it's only Brett's word, that looks super bad.
If they hold a hearing and have Ford testify the optics of a bunch of old man Republicans questioning her when some have already made up their minds look bad.
Plus apparently McConnell isn't happy with Brett, their best option might be to pull Brett and confirm an uncontroversial moderate (Merrick Garland) in the time after the elections but before the new seating.
How so? The only person who can actually rescind a nomination is the president. The Republicans could just choose not to vote for him. Which you would support if you actually care about setting precedents, since they set two under Obama: That the court should be balanced, and that a judge shouldn't be appointed before a major election. At the very least his nomination should be delayed until after November if we are operating purely on Republican and conservative precedent.
https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1043609180861542405
https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1043609636329394176
Wow Brett's more unpopular then Harriet Miers
Miers met with the Senate Judiciary Committee after her nomination and in those meetings she was ill-prepared and uninformed on the law. Senator Tom Coburn told her privately that she "flunked" and "[was] going
to have to say something next time." Miers had difficulty expressing her views and explaining basic constitutional law concepts. Miers had no experience in constitutional law and did not have extensive litigation
experience; at her Texas law firm, she had been more of a manager. In addition, Miers had rarely handled appeals and did not understand the complicated constitutional questions senators asked of her. To White
House lawyers, Miers was "less an attorney than a law firm manager and bar association president."
It's not about Kavanaugh being clean at this point, it's this idea that he shouldn't have consequences for it. If you look at the past two weeks or so, it's the same joke as always. We've gone from 'he didn't do it' to 'okay so he did but what teenager hasn't done something like that'.
Dr. Ford named Mark Judge as the only other individual who was in the room and directly witnessed what happened. Mark Judge has refused to voluntarily testify. It seems that if Republicans believe Kavanaugh’s account, and if they care about the truth, they would subpoena Mark Judge. And yet they’ve refused.
No one on earth believes Republicans care about what happened. Democrats already hate Republicans and Republicans think she's lying.
Reminder that several Republican senators had already made up their minds about Ford within a day of her identity being made public.
I worded that poorly, I know what me meant. The idea of him accusing others of ignoring facts is just hilarious to me.
Holy shit, word on the street is that Ronan Farrow is preparing to publish a second allegation against Kavanaugh from a different woman
Graham has already come out to say that he's already made his decision on Kavanaugh, with or without Ford's testimony. What a sack of shit
seems pretty likely they'll move to a full vote friday then before the next scotus session starts.
https://twitter.com/MichaelAvenatti/status/1044006928416825344
Oh shit, tweeted 10 minutes ago
Trump picks the best people.
https://twitter.com/MichaelAvenatti/status/1044013350873489409
So that's three separate women alleging misconduct then?
