WASHINGTON — Senate Republican leaders, bowing to a last-minute demand from Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, will delay by as much as one week a vote on whether to confirm Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, to allow time for an F.B.I. investigation into accusations of sexual assault against the nominee.
The decision, made in a hurried closed-door meeting between Republicans on the Judiciary Committee and Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, came after a dramatic reversal by Mr. Flake, who announced he would not support final confirmation until the F.B.I. investigates the allegations. With that stipulation, the Judiciary Committee then voted along party lines to advance Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Senate.
The delay puts a cloud over what Republicans expected to be a triumphant day, but they still had reason to be optimistic: Despite adamant Democratic opposition, they were still able to muscle the nomination through committee with an 11-to-10 vote and send it to the full Senate with a favorable recommendation.The White House needs to approve reopening the FBI investigation into Kavanaugh, and there is no indication that Trump will do so. My guess is that the wily McConnell felt Kavanaugh's confirmation out of Judiciary slipping away. So he punted the ball to Trump knowing that Trump is opposed to the FBI and will now take the lead on Kavanaugh's rushed confirmation.
Or I could be wrong. Prevailing GOP wisdom might have turned after yesterday's hearing. Placing Kavanaugh on the supreme court might now appear to be too costly, the specter of a Blue Wave turning into a Blue Tsunami. I'm sure all those committed #MeToo activists on Capitol Hill are having an impact.
We'll see. My bet is still on McConnell pushing the confirmation.
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Kavanaugh will be confirmed today by the Senate Judiciary Committee, followed by a final vote as early as Tuesday.
After Christine Blasey Ford told the story of her assault by Kavanaugh in 1982, Kavanaugh played the victim aggressively. According to "Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford Duel With Tears and Fury" by Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Nicholas Fandos,
Playing out against the backdrop of the #MeToo movement, only weeks before midterm elections that have already energized female voters and Democrats, the testimony occurred at the combustible intersection of politics and women’s rights. It evoked strong memories of one of Washington’s most memorable judicial confirmations: the 1991 hearings of Judge Clarence Thomas, who was accused of sexual harassment by the law professor Anita F. Hill.
At times, it appeared that Judge Kavanaugh was channeling Judge Thomas himself, who in 1991 denounced a “high-tech lynching for uppity blacks” at the hands of Democrats.
“My family and my name have been totally and permanently destroyed by vicious and false additional allegations,” Judge Kavanaugh told the committee on Thursday. But he vowed never to withdraw.Senator Lindsey Graham, the Republican hermaphrodite from South Carolina, staged a temper tantrum for the committee, slobbering on about the crucifixion of the Kavanaugh family by power-mad Democrats.
There were 57 arrests yesterday near the Supreme Court. Maybe there will be more today for the Judiciary Committee vote.
National politics are irredeemable. There is little or no connection between the rulers and the ruled. Any critical assessment of the decline and fall of a civilization will usually list this -- a governing class hermetically sealed from the genpop -- as a prime cause of collapse.
Regardless of the Blue Wave bearing down on him, Trump is moving full speed ahead with a war on Iran. Netanyahu made his annual appearance before the United Nations General Assembly to promote that war, accusing Iran of maintaining a “secret atomic warehouse” in downtown Tehran.
The problem with a war on Iran is that it cannot be won, a broadly accepted fact in the vast Western intelligence bureaucracy. It is the whole reason years were spent negotiating the JCPOA.
Trump isn't kowtowing to the Kremlin. Trump is kowtowing to Riyadh and Tel Aviv. So an Iranian war there will be. The Blue Wave will crash down on the White House this November (Trump's NAFTA reboot is headed for defeat) and Trump will use the lame duck period to gin up a Persian crisis.
Trump will enjoy a high probability of success in pushing the United States into a war with Iran because in order to block Trump Democrats will have to rediscover their atrophied inner dove. Democrats have too long suckled at the tit of neo-McCarthyite hysteria. The Democrats are a war-addled party.
Another mark in Trump's favor is the slavish nature of the European Union. The EU appears to be ontologically incapable of action absent U.S. backing.
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