re: #378 Big Beautiful Door

We’ll see if Collins, Murkowski and Flake have the stomach to put a rapist on the Court. I had no hope before today; now I have some.

I assume Sasse will trot obediently behind Flake in whatever noble and highly principled decision Flake makes.

And for some reason, I’m still holding it in the back of my head that Tim Scott in South Carolina (of all people) actually stopped a lower Trump nominee a few months back on an actual matter of principle. Would he do it again?

Somehow, I suspect that if Kavanaugh is going to be stopped this late in the game, Collins and Murkowski won’t be the ones leading the charge. Collins, especially, will equivocate in the wind and fall in behind Flake and Sasse as the 52nd and 53rd no votes.

Maybe even 53rd and 54th… we have no idea, after all, whether Jon Kyl has any spine as an appointed McCain replacement without any skin in the re-election game.

It’s nice, if nothing else, to see a fairly broad consensus that at this point in the game, the red-state Democrats up for reelection have nothing to gain by voting yes on Kavanaugh. Collins and Murkowski and Flake and Sasse can’t fall back on the idea that Donnelly or Heitkamp will be the 50th or 51st yes vote and give them cover to be #52 or 53 on that side.