At what was the most raucous opening to a Supreme Court nomination hearing in history, Senate Democrats repeatedly interrupted Judiciary committee chairman Charles Grassley’s opening statement, demanding that the hearing be adjourned until they had more time to review documents that passed across nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s desk when he worked as staff secretary at the White House for President George W. Bush.
Texas GOP senator John Cornyn, the majority whip, accused Democrats of promoting “mob rule.”
“I would suggest that if this were a court of law, that virtually every member on the dais on that [Democratic] side would be held in contempt of court because this whole process is supposed to be a civil one where people get to ask questions and we get to get answers,” Cornyn said. “I would just suggest we get on with the hearing.”
Chairman Grassley noted that over 400,000 pages of executive branch documents and 17,000 pages of speeches and teaching materials had been made available, in addition to 307 cases in which Kavanaugh had issued an opinion as a judge.
— Chris Deaton (@cgdeaton) September 4, 2018
Conservative legal scholar Ed Whelan writes of the Democrats’ request for additional executive branch documents: “There is nothing ‘unprecedented in the history of SCOTUS noms’ about a White House determination that certain records should not be provided to the Senate.”
Republicans hold a slim 51-49 majority in the Senate, so the only hope of defeating Kavanaugh is having every Democrat and two Republicans vote against him. But Senate Democrats’ strategy of repeatedly interrupting Grassley’s opening statement was a sign they think they don’t have a chance of flipping moderate Senate Republicans Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski against Kavanaugh. The aggressive tactic played to the Democratic base watching on TV, not moderate Republicans in the Senate.
