Neither Murkowski or Collins said that they were going to vote for Kavanaugh. Neither McConnell or Graham claimed that they had their votes. Graham admitted on Friday morning that they didn’t have the votes. We’ll never know, but I think that if we hadn’t agreed to a so called FBI Investigation, Murkowski and Collins would have voted no on the floor. As for Flake, who knows.
Of course, what the Democrats really wanted was an open ended FBI criminal investigation, but they didn’t get that, they only got a supplemental background investigation, a clean up on Aisle three. But, they are pretending that they got what they wanted, because they need to convince their constituents that they forced the Republicans to cave. Probably about the best outcome that we could manage given the wobbly Senators on our side.
Once we got to this situation, the FBI investigation was a necessary evil. I agree with that. That was Trump’s trump card. He was helping support Kavanaugh by urging the FBI investigation. He knew they’d find nothing.
At this point though, because the leadership didn’t show any fortitude, here we are.
They did nothing to ward this off. Ford led them around by the nostrils, jerking their chain every which way.