Mitch McConnell: We’re going forward with Kavanaugh and he’s going to be confirmed

This could just be a pep talk for the team, but McConnell is exceedingly good at getting votes to go the way he wants them to – when it’s a vote McConnell actually cares about. I could be wrong but from what I know about McConnell has a Senate taskmaster, if Susan Collins or Lisa Murkowski is wavering, he knows about it. If Jeff Flake or Bob Corker is getting weak-kneed, he knows about it.

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So it might be more significant than it appears at first glance that he says this:

“We’re going to be moving forward. I’m confident we’re going to win, confident that he’ll be confirmed in the very near future,” McConnell, a Republican, told reporters at the U.S. Capitol. “I believe he’ll be confirmed, yes.” McConnell also said the Senate had hired a woman lawyer to do the questioning of Kavanaugh and his accuser for Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee during Thursday’s hearing. All the Republicans on the panel are men. “We have hired a female assistant to go on staff and to ask these questions in a respectful and professional way,” McConnell said.

I guess McConnell’s not too concerned that Michael Avenatti’s soon-to-be-revealed third accuser will have anything more substantive than the first two.

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The Hill reports that Murkowski is likely to follow Collins’s lead, perhaps in the belief that the Senate’s Republican women need to be in solidarity on the matter. That’s obviously not how you should be deciding on something as important as a Supreme Court confirmation, but I suppose the two of them believe that if they’re going to go ahead and vote to confirm Kavanaugh in the current environment, they need to be able to have each other’s backs rather than one leaving the other to twist in the wind. Another report from Fox says as many as eight Republicans are wavering, but that probably just means they need Kavanaugh to give a solid accounting for himself on Thursday – and that nothing comes out that’s accompanied by any evidence or real corroboration, unlike the garbage we’ve seen so far. There will be more. You can depend on it. This is how the left always orchestrates these things. Just when you think you’ve knocked down the last accusation, another one surfaces. You’re playing whack-a-mole. It really doesn’t matter how credible any of it is. The accuser will be flanked by a high-profile left-wing attorney like Avenatti or Gloria Allred, the press will provide breathless coverage – the narrative lives for another day.

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