[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 152 (Wednesday, September 12, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Page S6115]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     NOMINATION OF BRETT KAVANAUGH

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, the Nation watched the President's 
outstanding Supreme Court nominee last week, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, 
testify before the Judiciary Committee.
  They saw Chairman Grassley guide the committee with gracious, strong 
leadership and an incredible amount of patience. The chairman deserves 
our gratitude, as do all of the committee staff, whose hard work and 
dedication made it possible for Senators to thoroughly examine Judge 
Kavanaugh and review more pages of documents pertaining to his career 
than were produced for the last five Supreme Court nominees combined.
  The American people also saw an extensive extremely impressive 
nominee. Judge Kavanaugh was candid and forthcoming, within the ethical 
constraints that exist for judicial nominees. He demonstrated the 
intellectual brilliance and thoughtful temperament for which he is so 
widely known. He showed exactly why he is universally acknowledged as a 
leading legal mind and exactly why he will make a phenomenal Associate 
Justice of the Supreme Court.
  Unfortunately, not everyone performed as admirably or as 
professionally last week. Some of our Democratic colleagues repeatedly 
interrupted Chairman Grassley, behaved rudely toward the nominee, and 
hauled out one dishonest partisan attack after another to try to 
distort his record and smear Judge Kavanaugh.
  Now, this is a nominee who Lisa Blatt, a prominent litigator and 
self-described liberal Democrat, testified as ``unquestionably 
qualified by his extraordinary intellect, experience, and 
temperament.''
  This is a nominee who prominent liberal law professor Akhil Amar 
praised as ``studious and open-minded.'' This left-leaning academic 
described Judge Kavanaugh's nomination as ``President Trump's finest 
hour.''
  This is a nominee whose record and reputation have revealed 
Democrats' partisan attacks to be futile and silly and dishonest. At 
this point, dishonest attacks and half-truths are all that is left for 
our colleagues who made up their minds long ago that they were going to 
oppose Judge Kavanaugh no matter what--no matter what.
  You don't need to take my word for this. The Washington Post's Fact 
Checker called out one of our Democratic colleagues and assigned her 
shameless misrepresentation of Judge Kavanaugh's testimony four 
Pinocchios--the strongest condemnation. This particular Senator cherry-
picked from a sentence where Judge Kavanaugh was paraphrasing one 
side's argument in a case that came before him, stripped his 
description of its content, and held up the party's position in that 
case as though it was Judge Kavanaugh's own personal opinion.
  But by trying to slime Judge Kavanaugh, the Democrats are only 
underscoring one of his most impressive skills--his widely acclaimed 
talent for thinking through all parties' perspectives and engaging 
fairly with the full range of views, regardless of his personal 
beliefs.
  This and all other specious attacks that were trotted out said 
absolutely nothing about Judge Kavanaugh's actual record. They said a 
great deal about the Senators who were willing to resort to them in 
order to appease the far-left special interests, but I suspect that 
everyone who listened fairly to Judge Kavanaugh and the other witnesses 
came away seriously impressed with his qualifications for the Court, 
and I look forward to voting to confirm him here on the Senate floor in 
the coming weeks.

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