Well, I guess we can forget about the Nathan Hale moment and move towards the Clarence Thomas example.  Apparently, Judge Kavanaugh is determined to push forward on his nomination to the Court, come what may.  And, he has the support of the President (for now) and leader McConnell.  Now McConnell does sound a bit tinny complaining about the behavior of the Democrats after the Merrick Garland situation.  Remember that McConnell refused to have a hearing and Senators refused to meet with him because he had been nominated by Obama who still had “only” 11 months to serve as President.  If you are looking for this provision in the Constitution or Senate Rules, don’t waste your time, it’s not there.

Instead, we will have a full-blown acrimonious confrontation where only the few remaining Senators with a conscience will be listening before sending out their tweets.  What is apparent, though, is that if one Republican male Senator opposes Kavanaugh, he is gone, as it is almost unthinkable that Collins and Murkowski would vote to confirm if that occurs.  So, look closely at Flake, Sasse, Corker, Heller and Gardiner.  If one breaks, the others may, too.  If Flake votes “no” on Friday morning, will McConnell have to decide if he was “just kidding” when he promised an up or down vote regardless of the tally?  I think he will convince Kavanaugh to withdraw, attack the Democrats and go back to his first choice of a Justice assuming he can get the President off of Twitter long enough to nominate someone else.

I was hoping for more from everyone, but when Lindsey Graham continues to lead the way in his attempt to out-Trump Tom Cotton, we shouldn’t expect much.  Any hope that the passing of John McCain might inspire some profiles in courage from his long-time amigo has long since died in the dust of his race to embrace the President.