senate floor. the context for every action the democrats have taken during this entire process. these statements remind us democrats may be trying to move the goalpost every five minutes, but their goal has not moved an inch. they will not be satisfied unless they have brought down judge kavanaugh s nomination. it started with straightforward political maneuvering, none of it worked, of course. but whatever excuses they could find to delay, delay, delay. first back in june, the democrats tried to argue the supreme court shouldn t confirm democrats tried to argue the senate shouldn t confirm a supreme court justice in any even numbered year, any even numbered year.
ken starr, bush v. gore, all the myriad controversies of the bush era. it would be one thing if judge kavanaugh discarded his partisan feelings once he donned the black robes of the jurist. unfortunately, he s been on the bench for many years, and to thursday s hearing revealed his bitter partisan resentments still lurk right below the surface. it should give us all pause to consider what it means to elevate such a partisan world view to the supreme court, whether it be a democrat or a republican partisan view. when rulings must be made on the legal merits, not, not on the side of the aisle which most benefits. and then the greatest issue against judge kavanaugh. the one that really bothers most people, his credibility. is he telling the truth? that issue supersedes all the others. there may be some who say, well,
doubt, without equivocation. if you say, well, maybe he s telling the truth, and maybe he s not, he doesn t belong on the supreme court. and i think most americans are saying that. again, even if you want to discount, as some people do, what happened when he was 15 in high school and 18 in college, you cannot discount what he is saying and professing at age 53 when it flies in the face of being truthful. that s the key question here. there is demeanor. he sure didn t show the demeaner of a judge at the hearing. there is partisanship. he brought out the most raw form of partisanship, so unbecoming of someone on the district court. federal appeals court, let alone the supreme court.
then they were reminded that justice kagan, breyer, and suitor will elected in even numbered years and that argument evaporated. next, they said they should be delaid because time-out few documents were available from kavanaugh s past public service. then they received the most pages of documents ever produced for a supreme court nomination, so guess what came next? the goalpost moved down the field and the democrats called for delay because there were too many documents for them to read. i wish this fight could have remained in the realm of normalcy, but when none of these tactics worked, once judge kavanaugh demonstrated his brilliance, open mindedness and collegiality at his confirmation hearings, some chose a darker road. the politics of personal destruction were willfully
the fbi investigation into these new allegations. background check investigation. who caused that? who caused this delay? i would ask leader mcconnell. not the democrats. we don t have the ability to do it. it was three members on his side who sincerely were seeking better truth because they heard two arguments and they weren t sure which was right, and they saw that without some kind of independent investigation it would tear the american people pay a price years down the road, no matter what the outcome of the vote on judge kavanaugh. so democrats didn t cause these delays and he knows it. it was the inability of all the republicans to be unified with justification because the truth should be sought after in a more sincere way for a nomination to the highest court of the land.