Senator Collins backs Kavanaugh, paving way for confirmation
Posted October 5, 2018 7:02 am.
Last Updated October 5, 2018 3:45 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said Friday she will vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination, all but ensuring that a deeply riven Senate will elevate the conservative jurist to the nation’s highest court despite allegations that he sexually assaulted women decades ago.
The dramatic Senate floor announcement by perhaps the chamber’s most moderate Republican ended most of the suspense over a tortuous, election-season battle that had left Kavanaugh’s fate in doubt for nearly a month after the first accusation against him. It all but assured a victory for President Donald Trump’s quest to move the Supreme Court rightward, perhaps for decades, and a satisfying win for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and the GOP’s conservative base.
The remaining undecided Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin, also says he will support Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. The West Virginia senator announced his decision moments after Collins.
Manchin says he has reservations because of the sexual misconduct accusations against Kavanaugh and the judge’s temperament in denying them. But he says in a statement he is casting his vote on “what is best for West Virginia.”
The Senate’s showdown roll call confirmation vote is expected Saturday afternoon.
With Republicans controlling the chamber by a narrow 51-49, Collins’ “yes” vote essentially assured a minimum of 50 votes for Kavanaugh. Republican Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, a fellow moderate and friend of Collins, has indicated that she will vote no, calling Kavanaugh “a good man” but maybe “not the right man for the court at this time.”
Vice-President Mike Pence planned to be available Saturday in case his tie-breaking vote was needed.
Confirmation would be a crowning achievement for Trump, his conservative base and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
Murkowski sat solemnly during the roll call and whispered “No” when it was her turn to vote. As the tally neared an end, she spoke with Collins, a friend. The pair was surrounded by colleagues from both parties after the vote.
Trump weighed in shortly after the roll call was announced, tweeting, “Very proud of the U.S. Senate for voting ‘YES’ to advance the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh!”
Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who’s repeatedly battled Trump and will retire in January, said he’d vote for Kavanaugh’s confirmation “unless something big changes.”
In the procedural ballot, senators voted 51-49 to limit debate, defeating Democratic efforts to scuttle the nomination with endless delays. That was the day’s first GOP victory in the spellbinding battle that’s been fought against the backdrop of the #MeToo movement and stalwart conservative support for Trump.
Republicans said the secret document – which described interviews agents conducted with 10 witnesses – failed to find anyone who could corroborate allegations by his two chief accusers, Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez. Democrats belittled the bureau’s findings, saying agents constrained by the White House hadn’t reached out to numerous other people with potentially important information.
The vote occurred against a backdrop of smouldering resentment by partisans on both sides. That fury was reflected openly by thousands of boisterous anti-Kavanaugh demonstrators who bounced around the Capitol complex for days, confronting senators in office buildings and even reportedly near their homes.
On the Senate floor, lawmakers’ comments underscored the lingering bitterness.
“What left wing groups and their Democratic allies have done to Judge Kavanaugh is nothing short of monstrous,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said on the chamber’s floor before the vote. He accused Democrats of using destructive, unwarranted personal attacks on the nominee and even encouraging the protesters, saying, “They have encouraged mob rule.”
Dianne Feinstein of California, that committee’s top Democrat, said Kavanaugh’s testimony at last week’s dramatic Judiciary panel hearing should “worry us all,” citing “a hostility and belligerence that is unbecoming” of a Supreme Court nominee.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called the fight “a sorry epilogue to the brazen theft of Justice Scalia’s seat.” That reflected Democrats’ lasting umbrage over Republicans’ 2016 refusal to even consider Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama’s nominee to replace the late Antonin Scalia.
When Trump nominated Kavanaugh in July, Democrats leapt to oppose him, saying that past statements and opinions showed he’d be a threat to the Roe v. Wade case that assured the right to abortion. They said he also seemed ready to knock down President Barack Obama’s health care law and to rule for Trump if federal authorities probing his 2016 campaign’s connections to Russia initiate legal action.
But that evolved into a late-summer spectacle after Ford accused Kavanaugh of trying to rape her at an alcohol-infused high school gathering in 1982, when both were teenagers. Two other women also emerged and accused him of other incidents of sexual misconduct. Kavanaugh has denied all the charges.
Under pressure from wavering Republicans, GOP leaders agreed to an extraordinary Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last week that mesmerized the nation as Ford nervously recounted her story and said she was “100 per cent” certain that Kavanaugh was her attacker.
A fuming Kavanaugh strode into the same packed hearing room that afternoon and said he, too, was “100 per cent” certain the incident had not occurred. He angrily accused Democrats of a “search and destroy” mission, fueled by their hatred of Trump.
