U.S. Senate votes to end debate, prepare Saturday confirmation vote on Kavanaugh

By Kevin Daley

The Senate invoked cloture on Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court Friday morning, teeing up a final confirmation vote for this weekend.

The vote to end debate and prepare the final confirmation carried on a 51-49 vote. GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joined with Democrats in opposition, while Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia voted with the Republicans.

Office of the Vice President

Judge Brett Kavanaugh, left, escorted to the Capitol by Vice President Mike Pence for meetings with members of the Senate.

Two other lawmakers who hold the decisive vote on Kavanaugh’s confirmation, GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Jeff Flake of Arizona, joined their Republican colleagues and voted in favor of cloture.

Senate Republicans will have to navigate another last-minute complication. A spokesperson for GOP Sen. Steve Daines of Montana said the senator will leave the Capitol Saturday for his daughter’s wedding, leaving the tenuous Republican majority shorthanded ahead of the narrow confirmation vote.

Vice President Mike Pence will remain in Washington throughout the weekend, should the Senate evenly split requiring his tie-breaking vote. A Supreme Court justice has never been confirmed by a vice president’s tie-breaking vote.

Senior lawmakers of both parties spoke on the Senate floor in advance of the cloture vote. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa accused Democrats of debasing the confirmation process, while Democrats warned of possible damage to the Supreme Court’s reputation and legitimacy given Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation of sexual misconduct against the nominee.

The Senate invoked cloture on Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court Friday morning, teeing up a final confirmation vote for this weekend.

The vote to end debate and prepare the final confirmation carried on a 51-49 vote. GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joined with Democrats in opposition, while Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia voted with the Republicans.

Two other lawmakers who hold the decisive vote on Kavanaugh’s confirmation, GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Jeff Flake of Arizona, joined their Republican colleagues and voted in favor of cloture.

Senate Republicans will have to navigate another last-minute complication. A spokesperson for GOP Sen. Steve Daines of Montana said the senator will leave the Capitol Saturday for his daughter’s wedding, leaving the tenuous Republican majority shorthanded ahead of the narrow confirmation vote.

Vice President Mike Pence will remain in Washington throughout the weekend, should the Senate evenly split requiring his tie-breaking vote. A Supreme Court justice has never been confirmed by a vice president’s tie-breaking vote.

Senior lawmakers of both parties spoke on the Senate floor in advance of the cloture vote. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa accused Democrats of debasing the confirmation process, while Democrats warned of possible damage to the Supreme Court’s reputation and legitimacy given Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation of sexual misconduct against the nominee.

“This should’ve been a respectable and dignified confirmation process,” Grassley said. “In a previous era, this highly qualified nominee would’ve received unanimous support in the Senate. Before left-wing outside groups and Democratic leaders had him in their sights, Judge Kavanaugh possessed an impeccable reputation and was held in high esteem by the bench and bar alike.”

Protests roiled the Capitol throughout the day. Several thousand demonstrators rallied inside Senate office buildings and marched about the Capitol complex, waving picket signs and chanting anti-Kavanaugh slogans. Protests are expected to continue throughout the weekend.

President Donald Trump denounced the protesters on Twitter Friday, styling the demonstrators “elevator screamers,” in an apparent reference to an encounter GOP Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona had with anti-Kavanaugh activists as he boarded an elevator last Friday.

A final confirmation vote could follow as early as Saturday afternoon, but could be delayed in view of the Daines wedding, should the GOP need his vote to confirm Kavanaugh.

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Image courtesy of Office of the Vice President

5 thoughts on “U.S. Senate votes to end debate, prepare Saturday confirmation vote on Kavanaugh

  1. End result of the Democrats smear campaign,bitter clinging deplorable s 1 – Leftard Marxists 0 as justice Kavanauh was sworn in this afternoon.

  2. Let’s review the evidence that potentially points toward something sinister:
    https://www.dailywire.com/news/36774/walsh-why-fbi-should-investigate-christine-ford-matt-walsh?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=idealmedia&utm_campaign=dailywire.com&utm_term=68720&utm_content=2298045

    1) Leland Keyser, the (former, I’m assuming) friend of Christine Ford who denied ever attending the party she described or even knowing Brett Kavanaugh at all, now reports that she was pressured to change, or “revisit,” her testimony. Who allegedly did the pressuring? None other than Monica McLean, the retired FBI agent and friend of Ford who, according to Ford’s ex-boyfriend, had been coached by Ford on how to pass a lie detector test. When the ex-boyfriend initially told that story, it was assumed that McLean was just a random friend. Now we find out that she has been deeply involved this whole time.

    2) Christine Ford has refused to turn over her therapy notes or any of the documentation from her polygraph test. If she is telling the truth, these materials would be enormously important evidence in her favor. If she is not telling the truth, these materials might destroy her case and, at a minimum, open her up to perjury charges. The fact that she will not turn over the evidence seems to indicate that it falls into the latter category, not the former.

    3) There is still a lot of confusion surrounding the way in which these allegations were first reported and then made public. Democrats knew about Ford for several weeks yet kept it secret. What were they doing in the meantime? Why did they wait so long? How much communication was there between Ford and Democrats? What was the content of that communication? The secrecy is suspicious and should be explored by federal investigators.

    4) Chuck Grassley sent a letter to Ford’s attorney last night, asking for the third time that any relevant documents be turned over. The last paragraph of his letter is very interesting:

    I urge you once again, now for the third time in writing, to turn over the therapy notes, polygraph materials, and communications with The Washington Post that Dr. Ford has relied upon as evidence. In addition to the evidence I requested in my October 2 letter, in light of recently uncovered information, please turn over records and descriptions of direct or indirect communications between Dr. Ford or her representatives and any of the following: (1) U.S. Senators or their staffs, particularly the offices of Senators Feinstein and Hirono, other than your communications with me and my staff in preparation for the September 27 hearings; (2) the alleged witnesses identified by Dr. Ford (Leland Keyser, Mark Judge, and Patrick “P.J.” Smyth); and (3) Debbie Ramirez, Julie Swetnick, or their representatives.

    This follows the same line of questioning explored by the prosecutor at the hearing last week. It would seem that the Republicans have strong reasons to suspect that these various different parties coordinated behind the scenes. Again, what was the nature of that coordination? Why did they coordinate or communicate at all? Why would an honest woman with truthful allegations need to have any conversations whatsoever with the political opposition of the man she is accusing? And why would she need to speak with the other accusers? We know now that someone close to Ford put pressure on Leland Kesyer; what about the other witnesses? And who instructed McLean to make that call?

    There are many crucial questions that must still be answered. Kavanaugh has been thoroughly exonerated, but Ford, her team, and Senate Democrats should now come under the microscope. Coordinated smear campaigns destroy innocent lives and undermine our system of government. A CNN analyst said yesterday that this is all “just politics.” No, it’s a lot more than that. If this was a calculated effort to lie, slander, and perjure — which is certainly how it looks — then it is not “politics” but a crime, and everyone involved should spend the next several years in a prison cell.

  3. Of the Goose and the Gander:

    ‘Psychological Projection’ is a Freudian theory in which the human ego defends itself against unconscious impulses or qualities (both positive and negative) by denying their existence in themselves while attributing them to others. Apparently, we all do it.

    During the Kavanaugh hearings, for example, senators and their proxies on both sides of the aisle accused each other of any number of indiscretions; discrimination, lude and lascivious behavior, and dishonesty, to name a few. The ‘Catch 22’ in any rebuttal to the accusations occurred, not in the accused’s initial retort, but typically in the second or third response to a continued barrage of redundant and increasingly extreme allegations.

    First, when Judge Kavanaugh responded in terms that weren’t directly associated with the specific indiscretions in question, usually in an attempt to maintain a semblance of neutrality, impartiality and, yes, to mitigate his risk; the accusers enhanced the allegations to include the intentional avoidance of discussions specific to the indiscretions so as to obfuscate and mislead the allegedly neutral and innocent accusers. When the accused then responded in some detail, even when only to recognize that specific indiscretions exist in fundamental human nature, the accusers then attributed that recognition as ‘knowingly’ being a party to the dissemination of the indiscretion (i.e. guilt by association).

    Judge Kavanaugh and his supporters responded to the enhanced allegations claiming, first, that there was no corroborating evidence provided by the accusers. When he was then asked to explain why anyone would make such claims if they weren’t true, the implication of the question being that it was now the presumption of innocence, not guilt, that must be proven (a supposition contrary with all modern tenants of jurisprudence expressed since the Magna Carta in 1215 A.D.), he emotionally described the specific ‘means, motive and opportunity’1 harbored by the Democrat Party since his (Kavanaugh’s )participation in the Starr investigation of Bill and Hillary Clinton many years earlier.

    Enter retired Justice Stevens and sitting Justices Sotomayor and Kagan; now warning that through Judge Kavanaugh’s response describing the Democrat Party’s ‘means, motive and opportunity’, that “… the line between the nation’s highest court and its polarized politics is in danger of being rubbed away.”

    Are the remarks from these Justices not ‘psychological projections’? Who, here, is guilty of partisanship? As long as it is now the presumption of innocence, not guilt, that must be proven, isn’t it inherent upon Stevens, Sotomayor and Kagan to demonstrate they are not guilty of the very same ‘polarized politics’ of which they are now accusing Judge Kavanaugh and his supporters?

    1 “In U.S. criminal law, means, motive, and opportunity is a common summation of the three aspects of a crime that must be established before guilt can possibly be determined in a criminal proceeding.” While the Kavanaugh hearings were not a ‘criminal’ trial, some of the accusations levied are unrestricted by Maryland’s statute of limitations and, therefore, a potential cause to a criminal felony action.

  4. To fellow American Patriots & my fellow Vermonters whom love America, both the US & VT Constitutions, cherish our Freedom & God given Rights, want small Govt no deficits. I want everyone to know Senator Sanders & Senator Leahy are not representative of all of Vermont. Senator Sanders & Senator Leahy we want Kavanaugh not your unconstitutional anti American views & shows you put on. I hope Nov 6th we have Senator Zupan & Representative Tynio so at least Sanders & Welch will be retired then hopefully Vermont can retire Leahy on the next round…

  5. Great, just one more step and we’ll have another Conservative Supreme Court Justice. The DemocRATS stated back in July, they would do anything to stop this nomination and as we saw they would do anything. This was a shameful display, then our own two Senate Buffoons couldn’t wait to get in front of a camera and fell in line with this nonsense.

    The DemocRATS used Dr. King as a pawn, in their little charade to stop a conservative nomination. They just don’t care who gets hurt for their agenda.

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