Kavanaugh 4-Ever
House Democrats will open an investigation into accusations of sexual misconduct and perjury against Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh if they win control of the House in November, Representative Jerrold Nadler, the New York Democrat in line to be the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said on Friday.
Speaking on the eve of Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation vote this weekend, Mr. Nadler said that there was evidence that Senate Republicans and the F.B.I. had overseen a “whitewash” investigation of the allegations and that the legitimacy of the Supreme Court was at stake. He sidestepped the issue of impeachment.
“It is not something we are eager to do,” Mr. Nadler said in an interview. “But the Senate having failed to do its proper constitutionally mandated job of advise and consent, we are going to have to do something to provide a check and balance, to protect the rule of law and to protect the legitimacy of one of our most important institutions.”
Good grief. If I’m the Republican National Committee, I’m going to take Nadler’s comments and remind people every day from now till Election Day what the Democrats intend to do if they win power. Having failed to crush this Privileged White Male’s nomination with unsupported allegations of sexual assault, and worse, Democrats will try to come pry him off the Supreme Court with the same allegations.
Yesterday, after Sen. Collins’s speech all but guaranteed that Kavanaugh would win confirmation today, I heard a couple of Democratic strategists saying that they hope passion among Republican voters over this thing will fade before election day. They were referring to the NPR poll this week showing that the Kavanaugh controversy had wiped out the big advantage Democrats had in voter enthusiasm headed into the fall election. Well, Jerrold Nadler has probably just guaranteed that that’s not going to happen. He’s laid it out clearly: if Republicans don’t show up to vote, and vote Republican, they’re leaving Kavanaugh at the mercy of a party that will try to remove him from the Supreme Court.
In other words, the Kavanaugh fight doesn’t end with the Senate’s vote today. It goes on until Election Day. Jerry Nadler told us so.