GOP Senators Furious over Democrats’ Kavanaugh ‘Circus’

Even before Friday’s explosive developments, Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Jon Cornyn (R-TX), top Senate Republicans long part of the establishment, unloaded on their Democratic colleagues during Thursday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, calling it a “circus” and a “disgrace” – the worst since the McCarthy hearings of the 1950s.

“Each of you deserves to be treated fairly and respectfully,” began Hatch, who as the president pro tempore of the Senate is third in the line of succession to the U.S. president, after the vice president and Speaker of the House, speaking of both Kavanaugh and his accuser.

“He’s been a great federal judge on the second highest court in the nation,” he began on Kavanaugh. Hatch continued that the Supreme Court nominee has:

… earned a reputation for fairness and decency. His clerks love him. His students – he teaches in law school as well – his students love him. His colleagues love him. This man is not a monster, nor is he what has been represented here in these hearings.

“But the circus atmosphere that has been created since my Democratic colleagues first leaked Dr. Ford’s allegations to the media two weeks ago, after sitting on them for six weeks, has brought us the worst in our politics,” said Hatch.

“Porn star lawyers with factually implausible claims are driving the news cycle,” the Utah lawmaker continued. “I hate to say this, but this is worse than Robert Bork, and I didn’t think it could get any worse than that.”

“This is worse than Clarence Thomas,” he went on. Hatch was elected to the Senate in 1976, and participated in the committee hearings for both Bork, who was defeated in 1987, and Thomas, who was narrowly confirmed 52-48 in 1991.

Kavanaugh is “a man who, until two weeks ago, was a pillar of the legal community,” the senator added. “There’s been no whisper of misconduct by him in the time he’s been a judge. What we have are uncorroborated, unsubstantiated claims from his teenage years, claims that every alleged eye-witness has either denied or failed to corroborate.”

“I think it’s a disgrace,” Hatch concluded.

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