Mitch McConnell’s game of chicken
If Mitch McConnell had the votes to confirm Brett Kavanaugh, he wouldn’t have needed to bring in every Republican Senator for an all-hands meeting tonight. If McConnell had the votes, last night’s private meeting between Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Jeff Flake wouldn’t have had any reason to exist. McConnell doesn’t have the votes – but he’ll never have a better chance than he does right now, so here comes his game of chicken.
There is simply no way that Collins and Murkowski – who have been uncommitted “maybe” votes all along – would have finished watching Brett Kavanaugh’s mentally unstable testimony yesterday and then immediately decided they were going to vote for him. So there’s no way that Mitch McConnell has them on board. Yet he’s pushing forward with a Senate Judiciary Committee vote in the morning which (unless Flake suddenly grows a spine overnight) will see Kavanaugh advanced out of committee.
That’s when we’ll see the real showdown take place within the Republican Party. After the committee vote, McConnell is going to quickly call a full Senate vote. Collins and Murkowski will go into that vote telling McConnell that they’re not ready to vote yes, that they want to hear from more witnesses, that they want this fleshed out further. But with the swift manner in which Kavanaugh is self destructing – not just as a nominee but as a person – McConnell can’t wait any longer.
Mitch McConnell may well take this as far as holding a full Senate vote a few days from now, without knowing which way Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski will vote. McConnell has tried this same tactic with these same two GOP Senators twice before in the Trump era, and he’s gone one for two. They caved on his tax plan. They defied him on his attempted Obamacare repeal. It’s not that McConnell necessarily wants to tempt fate again. It’s just that, with Kavanaugh having turned into a ticking time bomb, he doesn’t have any other choice.
