GOP Senate formally agrees to postpone Brett Kavanaugh vote as his rape scandal worsens

| 6:48 pm EDT September 17, 2018
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This afternoon we brought you the story of how Donald Trump had blinked on the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination, publicly stating for the television cameras that he was okay with the Senate Judiciary Committee postponing its vote. We explained that because of this, it was now likely that the Republicans on the committee would end up doing just that. Moments ago, they did it.

The Republican-controlled committee has just announced that Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh will testify in public about the attempted rape allegations on Monday, one week from today, according to the New York Times and other news outlets. By definition, this means that the committee vote originally scheduled for this Thursday has been postponed. There’s no word yet on when the committee vote is now supposed to take place. But this throws open Pandora’s Box when it comes to the Kavanaugh scandal.

The Kavanaugh nomination now has three problems. The first is that Ford is about to give a face and a voice to her accusations against Kavanaugh, meaning that the GOP will no longer be able to paint her as some shadowy figure who’s taking aim from behind the curtains. The second is that the Republicans on the committee will face the very tricky task of trying to discredit Ford to her face without setting off widespread backlash. We’ve already seen Orrin Hatch swing and miss today when he suggested that Ford had her story “mixed up,” as he carefully tried to avoid outright accusing her of lying.

The third problem for the Brett Kavanaugh nomination is that its best hope of succeeding has always been based around the GOP rushing him through as quickly as possible. Now that the Republicans are agreeing to a delay of at least several days and perhaps longer, it gives the Democrats and the media more time to continue digging through the skeletons in Kavanaugh’s closet – and more time for the public to digest his scandals – before a vote can take place. That could make it even harder for the wavering GOP Senators to vote “yes” in the end.