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Democrats finally did what many people were desperate for them to do and thought they never would during consideration of the Supreme Court nominee from a pr*sident who defrauded the American people to win office: PLAY FUCKING HARD BALL.
After getting jammed with more the 40,000 documents the night before hearings began for Judge Brett Kavanaugh, being deprived of some 90 percent of the documents related to his time in the George W. Bush White House, and being hamstrung by a prohibition on releasing many of the slim ration of documents they did have, Democrats threw caution to the wind Thursday and began openly defying the constraints placed on them by Republican Judiciary Committee chair Chuck Grassley.
“I sincerely believe that the public deserves to know this nominee’s record—in this particular case his record on issues of race and the law," Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey explained after he flouted Senate protocol and released a document designated "Committee Confidential" under the auspices of protecting national security. "I could not understand—and I violated this rule knowingly—why these issues should be withheld from the public," Booker told Grassley during Thursday’s hearing. After noting that he had not specifically broken the Presidential Records Act, Booker said he would "openly invite" any consequences that arose from his actions. "I stand by the public's right to have access to this document," he added.
Fellow Democrats on the committee backed Booker's move immediately after he took it, with Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin jumping in to say, “If there’s going to be some retribution against the senator from New Jersey, count me in.”
Brilliant. Democrats claimed the moral high ground by elevating the public's need to know over a Senate rule that—whatever purpose it might have served—was clearly being abused by the Republican majority.
GOP Sen. John Cornyn of Texas initially responded by calling Booker’s move “irresponsible and outrageous” and effectively threatening to expel him from the Senate.
“Bring it,” Booker countered. Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut called the “Committee Confidential” designation “bogus,” saying, “Just because there is a Senate rule doesn't mean it can be misapplied.”
A cascade of Kavanaugh's confidential documents have followed since Booker's insurrection, some of them released openly by Sens. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and others leaked to the New York Times.
Shortly after the skirmish, Republicans appeared to back off their threats of taking action against Booker et al., claiming that the documents had been cleared for release ahead of when Democrats made them public. Republicans are likely saving face here, realizing that bringing charges against Booker while he’s arguing for the public’s right to transparency would be a political loser.
That’s the way to do it. No more bringing a butter knife to a gun fight, as former Clinton spokesperson Brian Fallon noted on Twitter. It's about time Democrats did what Republicans have been doing for years if not decades—flouting norms and changing the rules whenever it damn well pleased them. Republicans had a chance to do the right thing when Justice Antonin Scalia died in 2016 and Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland to replace him. Instead, the GOP-led Senate denied giving Garland even the courtesy of a hearing, let alone a vote. We should have seen it coming. The last time a GOP-led Senate confirmed the Supreme Court nominee of a Democratic president was in 1895, when Grover Cleveland was president.
During the second day of questioning for Kavanaugh, GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham lamented the partisan nature of the hearing: "What kind of country have we become?"
The kind of country where Republicans flat-out blocked a duly elected Democratic president from appointing a Supreme Court justice based on a rule they made up out of whole cloth.
You built that, GOP. Democrats are finally starting to play by your rules.
