Lindsey Graham is mad. And the South Carolina senator has reason to be angry: Democratic colleagues in the Senate Judiciary Committee for turning Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation process into “the hypocrisy hearing.”
Democrats bellyache that Kavanaugh worked as an attorney for the Ken Starr investigation and served in the White House of President George W. Bush. Graham could care less.
“Have you heard of Justice Breyer? Do you know him?,” Graham said in an opening statement equally rambling and passionate. “Where did he come from? He was Ted Kennedy’s Senate judiciary person. Where do you think Republicans are going to go find a judge?”
Democrats whine also that Kavanaugh, an impartial judge on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, won’t promise to be partial when it comes to abortion and Roe v. Wade. Again, Graham has no sympathy.
[Also read: Delay, demand, derail: The Democrats’ attack plan against Brett Kavanaugh]
Republicans want a judge who will preserve the Constitution and uphold the rule of law, Graham lectured before flashing back to the 2016 general election. Hillary Clinton, he reminded the committee, said that preserving access to abortion would be one of her many litmus tests for a Supreme Court nominee. “We’ve got to make sure to preserve Roe v. Wade,” he said quoting Clinton, “not let it be nibbled away or repealed.” Why then, he argues, would it be a problem if Republicans enforce their own litmus test on the issue? (They don’t.)
Graham is right on both counts. Democrats can’t deny to a Republican nominee what they once allowed for themselves. And Democrats can’t push a justice to lift his blindfold and rule partially for cases they like.
But Graham has another reason to be angry, and it isn’t just hypocrisy. He held up what he considered his end of the bargain during the Obama administration, voting for both Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. The Republican senator certainly didn’t agree with every decision either nominee made. But Graham found both of them to be qualified and found himself “getting a lot of crap” as a result.
The same standard, Graham groused, has not been applied to Republican nominees like Neil Gorsuch and now Kavanaugh. “I would suggest you think long and hard,” he said with some bitterness to the aspiring 2020 Democrats on the committee, “if you’ve got a political ambition, of voting for this guy because it will not play well on your side.”
Graham isn’t wrong, and that is why he’s angry.
