Kavanaugh and the Senate’s Honor The judge is a distinguished nominee. The charges against him are uncorroborated.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/kavanaugh-and-the-senates-honor-1538695662
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has scheduled a Senate vote for Friday morning to close debate and move Brett Kavanaugh toward a final confirmation vote on Saturday, and it’s about time. The undecided Senators have had their extra week for an FBI probe, the review has turned up nothing to support the assault accusations against him, and now Senators should vote to put a worthy judge on the Supreme Court.
Democrats are complaining that the FBI report is incomplete, but then no report would satisfy them unless it found evidence that apparently doesn’t exist. “The most notable part of this report is what’s not in it,” said Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. She thinks accusations that have no corroboration are credible because the FBI can’t prove that something didn’t happen.
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The FBI was always likely to turn up little new evidence because Christine Blasey Ford recalls so little about the assault she says took place 36 years ago. The witnesses she says were there, including her best friend, say they don’t recall the party or refute that it happened. There are no corroborating witnesses and no incriminating evidence, and Ms. Ford’s story about key details also keeps changing.
The best summary of her case is in the memo by Rachel Mitchell, the Arizona prosecutor who specializes in sexual-assault cases and was invited to question Ms. Ford by Judiciary Republicans. “A ‘he said, she-said’ case is incredibly difficult to prove. But this case is even weaker than that,” Ms. Mitchell wrote. “I do not think that a reasonable prosecutor would bring this case based on the evidence before the Committee. Nor do I believe that this evidence is sufficient to satisfy the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard.”
You don’t have to believe Ms. Ford is lying to vote to confirm Judge Kavanaugh, and we don’t doubt her sincerity. You can simply assume that memories can be wrong after so many decades, and that it would be a terrible precedent to disqualify such a distinguished nominee when he categorically denies it and there is no corroborating evidence.
The latest liberal attack is that Judge Kavanaugh’s passionate defense of his integrity and his criticism of Democrats at his second hearing shows he lacks proper “judicial temperament.” Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski is said to be vexed by this point, though she didn’t raise it when she asked for an additional week for the FBI to investigate.
Mr. Kavanaugh has exhibited impeccable temperament in his 12 years on the federal bench, while teaching at Harvard, and in the rest of his public life. Only after Democrats accused him of vile behavior, and the media amplified it as if it were fact, did the judge react with the indignation that any normal innocent person would.
By this temperament standard, Democrats are entitled to accuse him of abusing women, being a drunk and committing crimes, and he is supposed to take it with a smile and a thank you for the question, good sir. Had he meekly pleaded for mercy at the Democratic Judiciary court, opponents would have said he looked guilty.
Then there is the claim that Mr. Kavanaugh has been treated no worse than Judge Merrick Garland, the Barack Obama nominee who was denied a Senate hearing and confirmation vote in 2016. So destroying a man’s reputation and accusing him of gang rape is the same as putting a nomination on hold for several months to let the voters decide who should nominate the next Supreme Court Justice?
The idea of delaying a confirmation vote in a presidential election year was set by none other than current Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. “We should not confirm any Bush nominee to the Supreme Court, except in extraordinary circumstances,” Mr. Schumer said in a July 2007 speech to the American Constitution Society. Democrats then held the Senate, and Mr. Schumer was putting down a marker if someone on the High Court were to retire in George W. Bush’s final year as President.
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Judge Kavanaugh is by all accounts one of the most qualified nominees for the Supreme Court in recent history. He has more appellate-court experience than Antonin Scalia did in 1986, and he has had more of his judicial reasoning adopted by the Supreme Court. Nothing in his three decades of public life echoes the behavior that his accusers claim they saw in his high school and college days. On the merits, confirmation is an easy vote.
Yet the stakes are larger because of the smears and character assassination. To reject Judge Kavanaugh now would ratify these Democratic tactics, with damaging consequences for the Senate, the Supreme Court and American politics. If uncorroborated accusations from decades ago can destroy a distinguished career for political reasons, then the same can happen to anyone and will happen to many.
Democrats have done great damage to the Senate that will take years to undo, but the first crucial step is confirming Brett Kavanaugh.
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