Things got worse by the hour Monday night for Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination. The Washington Post reported Donald Trump was coming unglued over the failure of Senate Republicans to push Kavanaugh’s nomination through at his decree. Trump’s growing impatience left GOP Leader Mitch McConnell in the position of explaining how the Senate works and that “he, too, is eager to hold a vote, but that he first needs to ensure that the nomination has the majority support to pass the Senate.”
In other words, McConnell clearly doesn’t have the votes he needs, a fact made pointedly clear by Fox News Capitol Hill reporter Chad Pergram.
Politico found the same, reporting that a host of Republicans are now going cold on Kavanaugh and are almost uniformly saying, Get back to me after Thursday (i.e. after the testimony of Kavanaugh accuser Dr. Christine Blasey Ford). And it’s not just Sens. Bob Corker (R-TN), Susan Collins (R-ME), Jeff Flake (R-AZ), and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)—their wavering is now being joined by Sens. Shelly Moore Capito (R-WV) and Marco Rubio (R-FL). Collins has additionally requested that the Senate Judiciary panel hear from Kavanaugh’s second accuser, Deborah Ramirez.
McConnell, being the perverse Senate ruler he has routinely proven to be, is now threatening to hold a vote as soon as early next week “no matter what happens” in that hearing.
The GOP leader is signaling that he will hold the vote anyway to force all 100 senators to go on record and put maximum pressure on red state Democrats that the GOP is hoping to defeat this fall, Republican senators said.
But this thing ain’t over yet. Not only is Stormy Daniels lawyer Michael Avenatti promising to come forward with a third credible accuser, but the New York Times dropped another damning report about a mysterious club Kavanaugh claimed to be a part of in his high school yearbook called the “Renate Alumni,” an apparent reference to unconfirmed conquests with a female student at a nearby Catholic girls’ school.
Bottom line: things were not looking good for Kavanaugh coming out of Monday.