Listen to “Kavanaugh Shines, Dems Embarrass Themselves” on Spreaker.
Two days into confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, Judicial Crisis Network Chief Counsel Carrie Severino believes Kavanaugh is proving himself to be a brilliant, thoughtful jurist while Democrats look ridiculous by trying to throw up roadblocks and encourage protesters.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is holding three days of hearings this week. Before the proceedings began, more than forty Senate Democrats announced their opposition to the Kavanaugh nomination. Severino agrees with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C, about how that makes Democrats look.
“If this were 20 years earlier, he would have gotten 90-plus votes. Judge Kavanaugh is someone who has a dozen years on the bench, 300-plus opinions to his name. He’s so smart that he’s recognized as being one of the leading federal judges by litigators across the spectrum,” said Severino.
On Tuesday, Democrats on the committee interrupted Republicans dozens of times to protest the late release of more than 40,000 pages of documents. Severino says Americans need to realize the documents have nothing to do with why Democrats are trying to stall.
“Don’t be confused. This is not the reason they want to postpone it. They had a conference call earlier in the day that Sen. (Richard) Durbin admitted to, talking about what they were going to do. ‘Are we going to walk out of the hearings?’ Ultimately, they decided to disrupt the hearings.
“It’s actually been really shameful. There were 70 people arrested yesterday for disrupting the hearings, not just the senators interrupting 44 times. These are people standing up, shouting, being dragged out of the room. You even had some of the senators encouraging them and rooting them on. This is so disrespectful to the process,” said Severino.
She says the Democrats are making a spectacle about ancillary issues because they have no good reason to oppose Kavanaugh and some are trying to boost their own political ambitions.
“They’re going for ratings. They’re going for get out the vote efforts. Three of the people on the committee are running for president in 2020. They’re interested in cutting campaign video, not in finding out about the nominee,” said Severino.
Even when Democrats got down to asking questions Wednesday, Severino says it was clear that many were looking to grandstand than listen to Kavanaugh’s responses.
“Especially Democrat senators, they just want to ask the question and then go, ‘Mic drop’ and walk away. You can’t just do that. [Kavanaugh] was saying, ‘No, there’s an answer to that question. You might think that was quite witty, but there really is an answer,'” said Severino.
In fact, Severino was most impressed by Kavanaugh’s thoughtful and thorough explanations about the various cases he has considered.
“I think he really shines when he’s explaining his logic. He doesn’t try to hide and tell them what he thinks they want to hear. He’s happy to explain carefully,” said Severino.
Listen to the full podcast to hear Carrie Severino’s analysis of how Kavanaugh handled Democrats trying to pin him down on various issues and what she thinks the vote on Kavanaugh is likely to be at this point.
