Lindsey Graham Says Stop The GOP Senator calls out Democrats for their ‘despicable’ tactics.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/lindsey-graham-says-stop-1538089494
The U.S. Senate is sometimes called “the Club.” No Member in our time more personifies the Club than South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham. On Thursday at the Kavanaugh hearing, he dropped out.
When his turn arrived to question Brett Kavanaugh, Senator Graham instead stared across the long table at the Judiciary Committee’s Democrats and, well, unloaded. He called their tactics against Judge Kavanaugh “the most unethical sham since I’ve been in politics.” A moment’s pause and then this: “Boy, do you want power, and I hope you never get it.”
What caused Lindsey Graham to pop?
A phrase rolling through the Kavanaugh confirmation story the past few weeks is character assassination. It is an ugly thing, and most of the time American politics stops short of defeating an opponent solely by tearing him apart personally and then using the damage to his reputation as a pretext to defeat him.
By the midday recess of Thursday’s hearing, that manifestly was the Democrats’ strategy. The hearing made clear that Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation was not going to be corroborated. But the Democrats’ real interest wasn’t Ms. Ford. It was Judge Kavanaugh. The informal standards of the Senate Club were shattered Thursday by Senators Dianne Feinstein, Richard Blumenthal, Mazie Hirono, Cory Booker and Kamala Harris.
One Democratic Senator after another took the allotted time to say Ms. Ford had been the victim of a sexual predator, specifically Judge Kavanaugh. None bothered to say the acts were “alleged.”
Do not forget the point of all this. It has been clear from day one that every committee Democrat would vote against Judge Kavanaugh. Their strategy has been to turn three Republican Senators against Mr. Kavanaugh to defeat his nomination and make that defeat a strategy for winning back Senate control in November.
By late afternoon, Senator Graham had enough. “To my Republican colleagues,” he said, “if you vote no, you are legitimizing the most despicable thing that I have seen in my time in politics.” It’s no secret that America’s polarized politics is running off the rails. Lindsey Graham’s finest moment may be that he threw the brake.
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