Republicans on Senate Judiciary Committee dissolve into chaos amid Brett Kavanaugh debacle

| 7:00 pm EDT September 25, 2018
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Who’s in charge of the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee at this point? That’s no longer clear – even to the people who are supposed to be running it. Several minutes ago, the committee announced to major news outlets that it had scheduled the Brett Kavanaugh vote for Friday. That prompted swift backlash, and quite a bit of confusion within the committee. It prompted committee chair Chuck Grassley to suddenly reverse the committee’s course.

In response to the breaking news that the committee vote had been scheduled for Friday, Chuck Grassley tweeted this, using his customary shorthand: “Judic Cmte noticed POTENTIAL exec mtg for Friday. Still taking this 1 step at a time. After hrg Dr Ford & Judge Kavanaugh’s testimony- if we‘re ready to vote, we will vote. If we aren’t ready, we won’t. Cmte rules normally require 3 days notice so we‘re following regular order.”

So what’s really going on here? Why would the committee announce to the media that the vote had been scheduled for Friday, if this wasn’t the case? More importantly, who was behind this announcement? All along it’s seemed like two other Republicans on the committee, Orrin Hatch and Lindsey Graham, have been calling the shots for the GOP, even as Grassley has spent most of his time flip-flopping on deadlines and – we’re not kidding – tweeting about squirrels and trombones.

Something is afoot here. As Palmer Report has spelled out, no one on the Senate Judiciary Committee is going to decide the fate of the Brett Kavanaugh. Instead that falls to Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski. The two of them keep throwing up one roadblock for the nomination after another, in a seeming attempt at derailing it before they can be forced to vote “yes” or “no” on it. Now the committee can’t even figure out whether it wants to cave to Collins and Murkowski’s demands, or plow ahead in a manner which will increase the odds that the two of them end up sinking this.