Justice Kavanaugh Confirmation Hearing *DISCUSSION AND LIVE COMMENTARY*

[IceSpear]

What's even the point of these hearings? We know everyone's vote is already locked in regardless.

[IceSpear]

What's even the point of these hearings? We know everyone's vote is already locked in regardless.

Hopefully at a minimum for the Democrats they can finally get the media to stop lying that Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski are moderates.  That will probably help Murkowski, but hopefully the Susan Collins' lying to the people of Maine will end her dishonest political career.

What would your definition of moderate be? Someone who votes with the Democrats on everything?

Collins and Murkowski are certainly far more moderate than most of the Republicans the media passes off as "moderate" like Comstock, Paulsen, McSally, Coffman, Valadao, etc. who vote with Trump 97-99% of the time. Collins is in the high 70s and Murkowski is in the low 80s. Which is way too high in my opinion, but what do you expect? They aren't Democrats.

[IceSpear]

Either Collins is retiring in 2020 or she really is oblivious to how precarious a situation her political career is in. She's pissed off Republicans to the point she may very well lose her primary, and if she does survive she has to somehow win over all the democrats shes pissing off now. I know its tricky finding a happy middle, but Collins seems to have given up entirely on finding it.

You are deluding yourself if you think kavanaugh will matter in 2020, you'll throw a long temper tantrum but once he gets confirmed you'll find another shiny object, just like how all of you have forgotten about children at the border

It's nice of you to admit openly like this that you're a moral degenerate.

Putting the morality aside, he's absolutely right. Kavanaugh will be forgotten a month after he's confirmed by the vast majority of people once they see a new shiny object (and there are plenty thrown about every week by the clown in the White House.)

[IceSpear]

There's two other factors here though. One is Trump in his head insane level of narcissism. He sees this as a personal challenge to he himself, just like any other political opposition. It is beyond him and his emotional range to quickly withdraw Kavanaugh or accept Cavanaugh's withdrawal as it would be played out for the cameras, nominate and ideologically similar judge who gets confirmed by a large margin. No, it's about him and Kavanagh stepping down would in Trump's mind make himself look weak, a loser, Etc. This is what you get when you have someone with severe narcissist personality disorder as a president.

The second Point plays into the first, and that's timing. At this point it would be essentially impossible 4 hearings on a new nominee to be held prior to the Senate recessing to go home and campaign. Everyone suspects of course that Republicans will try to push through any replacement for Cavanaugh threw a lame duck session, but the Optics are bad in already what is turning out to be a ugly looking year midterm for the GOP. And if the very real risk comes to pass that something comes up on that nominee like it did with Cavanaugh, the Republicans would almost surely be screwed and not be able to present a third nominee before the new Senate, quite likely democratic-controlled, takes office in January.

Ergo, between the combination of Trumps megalomania and tight time squeeze of getting someone nominated before the Democrats potentially take control of the Senate, the GOP is largely forced to double down on Kavanaugh.

I think a lot of you guys are also underestimating how strongly the Republican base feels about this. Republicans, conservatives, rural white male Deplorables, etc. are absolutely outraged at the way Kavanaugh is being treated. They see this as a witch hunt against all white men, and now see the Democratic Party as even more of an anti white male hate group than they did before. Obviously most of these people were never voting Democratic to begin with, but it's not a smart idea to capitulate to "radical Feminazis" and spit in the face of your base a month before an election. Especially a midterm election which is mostly about base turnout. I also think Dems might have overplayed their hand a bit here, at least in regards to their deep red state Senate incumbents. Kavanaugh is moderately unpopular in most polls, so it's a winning issue for them overall, but if he's at -10 or so nationally, that means he's probably popular in North Dakota and West Virginia. So it could very well hurt Heitkamp and Manchin more than help them.

[IceSpear]

The ole I was a virgin excuse

https://mobile.twitter.com/grynbaum/status/1044342064450859009

What does being a virgin have to do with any of the things he was accused of? What a bizarre statement.

[IceSpear]

I just don't get what McConnell's doing.
Kavanaugh is becoming politically toxic, and could easily be replaced by Barrett.
Instead he's roaring ahead, in an attempt to muscle the nominee onto the court.

Either he's playing 12th dimensional chess, beyond the scope of my feeble mind, or he's losing his touch. If Cruz makes a gaffe during the testimony, or during voting, and actually puts Texas into play, then McConnell can only blame himself.

He's got less capital to threaten the Red-state Dems with, given how public the Kavanaugh allegations have become, and he's unnecessarily endangering Heller and Cruz by making them vote for a highly controversial nominee.

Not the mention the effect on the House.

Ignoring the questions of how long replacing Kavanaugh would take and whether they'd still have the votes to confirm someone by then, it would be demoralizing.  It would look like the Republicans either admitting they made a mistake in supporting him, or that they aren't loyal their people when they come under fire. 

I don't know why the Republicans are so resistant to this.  Look at what happened with Harriet Miers; after she withdrew, Alito was appointed and unanimously confirmed.  Surely no conservative can be unhappy with how he turned out on the bench.

Uh, Alito's confirmation vote was not unanimous. Check your history book and try again.

Plus Harriet Miers was not pulled a month before a national election, she was pulled earlier in the process, and conservative Senators were tepid at best in their support for her nomination.

My point is that Kavanaugh is not the only conservative judge around, and he could be replaced with an equally conservative candidate to get the same long-term result but without (more) controversy.  There's still time to get another nominee through, if they move expeditiously.  So it just seems to me like that would be the politically smart thing to do.

The problem is that if Kavanaugh goes down, any man can go down. Any man can be taken down at any time by any vengeful woman who claims they were assaulted in kindergarten 50 years ago. It'll be like the Salem Witch trial writ large.

Yep. This is the mindset of Trump, many other Republican politicians, and most importantly the Republican base. This is beyond just Kavanaugh now for them.

[IceSpear]

I just don't get what McConnell's doing.
Kavanaugh is becoming politically toxic, and could easily be replaced by Barrett.
Instead he's roaring ahead, in an attempt to muscle the nominee onto the court.

Either he's playing 12th dimensional chess, beyond the scope of my feeble mind, or he's losing his touch. If Cruz makes a gaffe during the testimony, or during voting, and actually puts Texas into play, then McConnell can only blame himself.

He's got less capital to threaten the Red-state Dems with, given how public the Kavanaugh allegations have become, and he's unnecessarily endangering Heller and Cruz by making them vote for a highly controversial nominee.

Not the mention the effect on the House.

Ignoring the questions of how long replacing Kavanaugh would take and whether they'd still have the votes to confirm someone by then, it would be demoralizing.  It would look like the Republicans either admitting they made a mistake in supporting him, or that they aren't loyal their people when they come under fire.  

I don't know why the Republicans are so resistant to this.  Look at what happened with Harriet Miers; after she withdrew, Alito was appointed and unanimously easily confirmed.  Surely no conservative can be unhappy with how he turned out on the bench.

GOP establishment had a lot more sway with the base in 2005 then they do in 2018. Back then, they could drop Myers and face no backlash from the base. Today, you drop Kavanaugh, you will be seen as a sellout.

Not to mention nobody cared about Myers, and it was over a year before the next election.

[IceSpear]

How come Dean Heller is not undecided?

Shouldn't he be pretending that he's a moderate right now?

Democrats aren’t going to vote for him regardless of what he does, but he desperately needs the R base to come out for him.

Yeah, Heller has long since quadrupled down on embracing Trump, turning out the base, and hoping by some miracle that it is somehow enough for him to squeak by.

[IceSpear]

I don't believe he will.

I believe liberal Democrats in WV would sink him if he did, as liberal Democrats sunk conservative Democrats Dollar Bill Blakely and Waggoner Carr, both of whom lost to Republican John Tower in the 1960s.

There aren't very many liberal Democrats in WV these days.

[IceSpear]

RUBIO (!!!!!!!!!) refuses to promise support for Kavanaugh:

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Why bother with the exclamation points? We all know he'll vote for him in the end, assuming it comes to a vote. Reminds me of when people actually thought Ron Johnson of all people might vote against Trumpcare or tax reform, lol.

[IceSpear]

I don't believe he will.

I believe liberal Democrats in WV would sink him if he did, as liberal Democrats sunk conservative Democrats Dollar Bill Blakely and Waggoner Carr, both of whom lost to Republican John Tower in the 1960s.

There aren't very many liberal Democrats in WV these days.

There are enough to decide the election negatively for Manchin if he angers them too much.

True. Hillary performed absolutely abysmally there in 2016, but Manchin still desperately needs those ~188k votes. But something tells me that if someone was a committed enough Democrat to vote for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, there's probably not much Manchin could do to lose them.