A Massive Rock and an Incredibly Hard Place

I have no idea whether or not Brett Kavanaugh will be confirmed for the Supreme Court.  I think it's likely he will -- but anyone who gives you a certainty (even if they turn out to be right) is just guessing.  While I do think the odds right now favor him getting confirmed, I would not be remotely shocked if he withdraws, or if his name is withdrawn for him, or if he stays on but gets voted down.  In part, the reason I don't know -- nor does anyone yet -- because I don't think the story is fully told yet.

What I do know is that the Republicans screwed up this nomination SO horrifically that they have created a disaster for themselves with the mid-terms, whatever happens with this nomination.

If Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed, polls shows that the public and women voters most-especially will be aghast at the Republican Party who bullied this nomination through, and that includes Independent voters in the middle who are undecided, and even moderate Republicans.  Even a "Fox News" polls shows that the public doesn't want Kavanaugh confirmed by a huge margin of 10 points.  That's unprecedented with Supreme Court nominees.

But also, even if Kavanaugh is not confirmed, Republicans have screwed themselves.  That's because not only will that same public and most-especially those same women be just as virulently outraged at Republicans who staunchly, rigidly, gallingly have defended someone who was so problematically seen as a sexual attacker that he had to withdraw (or was voted down)…but also, the Republican base is will be utterly furious at their own party for having the majority yet not being able to confirm someone they see as such a fine conservative and Trump's man -- and wimping out.  Consider what Tucker Carlson said on "Fox News" yesterday when talking about the possibility of Kavanaugh not being confirmed -- "Republicans in the Senate do not care about you."  No, he wasn't merely complaining about the few Republicans in the Senate who may not support Brett Kavanaugh all the way, but no, no, screw them ALL.  And this after the Republican Senate has carried the water for Trump like lapdogs since the day he was elected, at the expense of their souls.

But the thing is -- it's not just how Republican senators vote that has outraged so much of the public, it's how they GOP has handled the whole confirmation process.  It was bad enough when the public saw Republicans unwilling to release hundreds of thousands of pages of documents about Kavanaugh's time in the White House, or that Republicans dumped 100,000 pages of material the night before the hearing began.  All that pointed profoundly to a hearing where Republicans had no intention of being fair and open for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.  But once the allegations of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford surfaced, votes aside, it was clear that Republican abuse and bullying of women intensified.

The public saw --

Committee chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) bullying Dr. Ford to ensure she testify when he wanted her to and under his conditions.  Statements from senators like Orrin Hatch (R-UT) that demeaned Dr. Ford, that maybe she was "confused," even before hearing her testify.  Trump refusing to call the FBI in to investigate the accusation.  The Republican majority of the Judiciary Committee refusing to subpoena the witness Dr. Ford said was actually in the room when the attack she said occurred.  Tweets by a top Grassley aide Mike Lee, the Chief Counsel for Nominations, the staff member leading the committee's investigation, were SO biased in expressing his determination to confirm Kavanaugh giving lie to protestations of fairness, that they were later deleted.  And of course Trump himself, unable to stick to the script, damning Dr. Ford by saying if the events she described were so terrible, why didn't she report them to the FBI 36 years earlier.  (Never mind of course that one doesn't report accusations of sexual assault to the FBI.)  And just yesterday, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) took to the Senate floor and slammed all of these stories about Brett Kavanaugh -- which, to be clear, now include an article in the New Yorker magazine about an incident of sexual abuse by Kavanaugh at Yale, and attorney Michael Avenatti announcing he has a third victim about to go public, as well as a report that a Maryland D.A. might possibly be looking into a fourth case -- as being, according to GOP leader McConnell, all just part of a big Democratic conspiracy.  Which means Mr. McConnell doesn't believe any of the stories are true, that all the women are liars.

And then there's also this passage in the New Yorker article --
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Yes, that's right.  Republicans actually knew a week earlier about the second woman claiming to be a sexual abuse victim of Kavanaugh.  And they not only buried it, but worked to rush the confirmation process through, so that it couldn't come to light.

So, even the vote aside (which is a whole lot to put aside), the Republican Party has done the near impossible.  They took what is now largely regard in history as the GOP's reprehensible treatment of Anita Hill in 1991 when she testified about sexual abuse by then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas...and not only didn't learn their lesson from it, but actually made it worse!!!!

Even before having any idea how people will vote, I would suggest that the Republican Party has done themselves irreparable damage in the upcoming mid-term elections just six weeks away.  And the party was facing a Blue Wave before this.  And to be clear, it's not just the numbers of voters Republicans have impacted negatively from their handling of the Kavanaugh nomination, but the intensity.  And in a mid-term election, which is usually poorly attention, voter enthusiasm, the get-out-the-vote effort, is critical.  And the GOP has now outraged voters beyond their detestation of Trump alone.

And now, once you get past all that about the confirmation process, now add in the Senate voting.  That whole part about how if Brett Kavanaugh gets confirmed, voters (and especially women voters) are going to be outraged beyond measure -- and if he doesn't get confirmed, women voters (and voters across the board, including the furious Republican base) are going to be almost equally outraged.

And keep in mind that whatever happens with the confirmation, events don't end there.  There still will be journalists investigating the story, there will perhaps be other women coming forward, there could be D.A.'s in Maryland (where there's no statute of limitations) looking into any criminal actions, and the reality remains that Brett Kavanaugh will be on either the Supreme Court or the federal bench, and open to impeachment.

The Republican Party has created a nightmare for themselves, just weeks before the mid-term.  However the confirmation process turns out, they are damned if he's confirmed and damned if he isn't.  And they did it all to themselves.

It couldn't happen to a more deserving group of folks.