OPINION:
Sen. Lindsey Graham’s brilliance is on display again.
He says President Trump can make the November congressional elections about restoring Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh’s good name if the Senate, with its 51-49 Republican majority, fails to confirm his Supreme Court nomination by one vote.
“Here’s what I would tell the president: I would appeal the verdict of the Senate to the ballot box — this good man should not be destroyed,” the South Carolina senator told Sean Hannity on Fox News on Monday night. “If you legitimize this process by one vote short, we’ll be on to the next person — I’d hate to be the next person nominated. I would feel horrible that we destroyed Kavanaugh.”
Mr. Graham said he thinks the Senate will vote to confirm Judge Kavanaugh. If it doesn’t, he said, “I would renominate him and I would take this case to the American people and I’d ask voters in Indiana, in Missouri, in North Dakota and other places where Trump won — saying who he would nominate if he got to be president — and see if the voters want to appeal the verdict of their senator.”
Like the judge, Mr. Graham has bared his teeth at Democrats and for good reason. No matter how many times Judge Kavanaugh heaves his nomination boulder up the Senate confirmation mountain, Democrats find a way to roll it back down.
Surfacing grotesque allegations that no credible witness has substantiated or that seem inherently incapable of substantiation seemed at first to threaten the Supreme Court appointment. Then putting off a full Senate vote pending results of yet another FBI background check — the agency’s seventh on the judge — seemed like an endlessly extendable delay and therefore the biggest threat to confirmation.
When the allegations of sexual abuse of women continued to yield zero evidence, the Democrats switched to claiming the judge’s getting sloshed to the eyeballs on beer as a teenager disqualified him from the Supreme Court. Yes, this from the kettle.
Did he or didn’t he black out when drinking too much Bud? Did he lie about not blacking out? Should a man who lies to Democratic senators — his betters — be a justice? What do entries 23 and 49 on his calendar when he was 17 tell us about his high court unfitness?
Mr. Graham knows Democrats shouldn’t claim all the credit for this agony Judge Kavanaugh and his family are enduring at the hands of Democrats willing to violate all decent norms of behavior to keep a conservative majority off the high court. Democrats get a little help from Republicans.
Why?
Because Republicans have to cooperate, given those unrefusable offers from Democrats and GOP fifth columnists, including one on the Judiciary Committee. (I won’t name that GOP flake, in the interests of the fairness and comity that Democrats have taught us to embrace, except to say he is the committee’s — and Homo sapiens’ — weakest link.)
The flake’s offer: My make-or-break Judiciary vote for Judge Kavanaugh in exchange for a seventh FBI Kavanaugh check — of no more than a week and limited to Christine Blasey Ford’s accusations. Otherwise, bye bye Brett.
The Democrats claim all they are asking from Republicans is to give truth a chance. Democrats act like all they are asking is to roll Republicans by holding off a confirmation vote till after the November elections. Then if Democrats win the Senate, confirmation will be hugely difficult in a lame-duck Republican Senate.
Credit the party of Sens. Charles E. Schumer and Richard Blumenthal for its never-give-up determination. Nine of the 10 Judiciary Democrats have written a letter naming a minimum of 24 people the FBI must investigate to find out if Judge Kavanaugh was a teenaged drunk who blacked out at parties in prep school and, according to an unsavory accuser even Democrats shrink from, gang raped every female in sight, short of his classmates’ mothers — and who knows, New York Democrat Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand may have made that accusation by the time you read this.
“To those who I hear say, over and over, this isn’t fair to Judge Kavanaugh, he’s entitled to due process. What about the presumption of innocence until proven guilty?” she says.
Sounding like either a convert to Stalinism or a long-time secret practitioner, Mrs. Gillibrand answered her own question regarding Judge Kavanaugh’s rights to due process and the presumption of innocence this way: “He’s not entitled to those because we’re not actually seeking to convict him or put him in jail. We are seeking the truth. We are seeking facts. We are seeking just what happened.”
Just the truth, ma’am, in the form of whatever the accuser claims is the truth. What about the accused and his presumption of innocence for him? In the Gillibrand America possibly in store for us, the accused can go Kavanaugh himself.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.