Unraveling Republicans can’t get their Brett Kavanaugh story straight
Donald Trump blinked today when he said that he would be okay with the Brett Kavanaugh vote being delayed, and then the GOP blinked when it announced that the Senate Judiciary Committee would in fact delay its vote. Now, even as Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Kavanaugh prepare to testify on Monday, the Republicans in the Senate are tripping over each other’s stories as they quickly unravel.
First we saw Republican Senator Orrin Hatch state that even if Kavanaugh did try to rape Ford, he should be confirmed to the Supreme Court anyway, because he’s become a better person since then. Shortly after Hatch made these abhorrent remarks, Palmer Report wrote that this could cause problems for the GOP, because not all Republican Senators would be willing to follow him down such a road. Sure enough, Lindsey Graham has said tonight that he’d have a hard time voting for an attempted rapist.
Based on his flip flopping track record of late, Lindsey Graham cannot be trusted on this matter. Based on how he handled Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas in 1991, Orrin Hatch should be actively distrusted on all matters in general, and on this matter in particular. But the point is this: Republicans like Hatch and Graham are already unable to get their story straight when it comes to Kavanaugh. The more the GOP messaging about Kavanaugh becomes fractured, the more difficult it’ll become for the wavering Republicans to vote for him.
So where does this leave us? That’s still unclear. I don’t know precisely what the odds were a week ago of Brett Kavanaugh being confirmed, and I don’t know precisely what the odds are today. But I do know that the odds are much lower now than they were – and the longer this process drags on and gets delayed, the more those odds will continue to drop.
