who has denied it but also said he doesn t remember what was going on. he s also quite a colorful character whose testimony would be quite interesting. so much would come up. would they have to call the therapist, someone who has the notes saying she talked about it in 2012? it would be a massively viewed hearing, that s for sure. one other element, joan, if you can help me out quickly. senator mcconnell, he could skip the committee vote altogether. he could take this straight to the floor. what would that do to judge kavanaugh s chances if the republican leader did that, do you think? i actually think those would decrease his chances of confirmation because that would seem like such a run around. already, this confirmation hearing process has been marked by, you know, the withdrawal of certain documents, the speed with which the hearings were held. there s already a sense that the republican majority has been steamrolling this, and to take such an extreme step then, i
begun. so i m just saying, when you say, the process, hang on well, if dianne feinstein has been sensitive to all of this, she s a veteran at this. she s gone through this time and time again, the confirmation hearing process. and the fbi, law enforcement, does the background investigation. they ask questions and then that gets borne out through a series of closed doors meetings before any of the public hearings even happen. but i think you re missing the point here. he is totally missing the point. i m not missing the point. absolutely, you are. i firmly believe that someone had the courage to come forward, certainly deserves and should be heard and the american people but she was not ready to come forward earlier this year. she went back and forth and was making up her mind about whether or not to come forward. yeah, but let s not forget, that decision was made for her by a leak. and you re attacking senator feinstein as the basis for your tack on her. yeah,
economy is going the way it is and he s stuck in the 40s or as john just said, in the 20s in california, you don t have to wonder they re going to lose seats. it s just a question of how many. by how many, yeah. that s the only thing you have to speculate. yeah, we re going to talk more about that exact question with john harwood. but still to come we have the very latest on brett kavanaugh s confirmation hearing process where it was hard to tell what was signal and what was noise. people are wondering whether these hearings are turning into a circus, and i want to defend circuses. circuses are entertaining and you can take your children to them. this hearing is neither entertaining nor appropriate for young people.
he s going to say because we have a little preview of his comments right here. these excerpts have just been released. here is what he s going to say. a good judge must be an umpire, neutral and impartial arbiter who favors no litigant or policy. i don t decide cases based on personal or policy preference. i am not a pro-plaintiff or pro-defendant judge. i am not a pro-prosecution or pro-defense judge. i am a pro-law judge. he ll say all the the right things. all the things you want him to say. so how are you going to get him to answer that definitively, your burning questions? it will be very difficult to get him to answer in front of us in this confirmation hearing process those questions defen ti defentively. now justice gorsuch last year sat before us in the same confirmation process and sited his own book on precedent, a book which judge kavanaugh helped co-write. and yet justice gorsuch in the last year voted on five
no doubt that confirmation hearings for judge kavanaugh will go on next week despite some democrats pushing for a delay. our next guest as insight into the process. he was the leading communication strategist for judge neil gorsuch during his confirmation hearing process. great to have you on the program this morning, ron. if you could, give us some insight as to what goes into this process. right, well, it s a very labor-intensive. unfortunately, the confirmation process has now turned into more like a political campaign that lasts around two months and you ll only really see the nominee talk when he gives his nomination speech at the white house and then when he gives his opening statement at the senate judiciary committee hearing. and answers questions. and so literally in between meeting with senators to talk about his views on the law, he