Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and his Democrats have failed in yet another scheme to derail the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh as the next associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court after they attempted to use arcane Senate rules to force the Senate Judiciary Committee to adjourn at 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday, just a few hours into the first day of committee senators’ questioning President Donald Trump’s second Supreme Court pick.
Instead, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell flipped their playback in their faces and is adjourning the entire U.S. Senate to keep the confirmation hearings going.
Schumer attempted to invoke what is called the “2 p.m. rule,” objecting to the Senate conducting business as usual on the floor while the Judiciary Committee continues its business past 2:00 p.m. In response, McConnell adjourned the entire U.S. Senate floor so the Judiciary Committee could continue the Kavanaugh hearings:
As the Washington Examiner‘s Pete Kasperowicz detailed in a piece on the matter, essentially what Schumer has done is force a “shutdown” of the entire U.S. Senate to protest Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings:
Senate Democrats on Wednesday forced the Senate to adjourn shortly after 1 p.m. to protest the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, although the move did not disrupt the ongoing confirmation hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Under Senate rules, unanimous consent is required for committees to hold hearings after 2 p.m. But Democrats withheld that consent, and without it, Republicans had to choose between either keeping the Senate in session and shutting down Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing, or adjourning the Senate so the hearing could continue.
Republicans chose the latter, and the Senate was adjourned shortly after 1 p.m., after Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the floor that Democrats were making the move to protest Kavanaugh.
This comes a day after Schumer’s office, as NBC News reported, and his deputy, Senate Minority Whip Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), confirmed in the first day of hearings on Tuesday, orchestrated mass disruptions Tuesday during opening statements day in the hearing. Schumer’s team reportedly coordinated interruptions–more than 60 of them–by Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats. More than 70 people were arrested on the first hearing day as well, charged by U.S. Capitol Police with disorderly conduct for unlawfully disrupting the hearing. The interruptions came mostly from the audience inside the room but some of them outside.
McConnell, in his own speech on the Senate Floor on Wednesday morning before adjourning the full Senate to thwart Schumer’s latest ploy, bashed Democrats for their “rude, disrespectful, and boorish” behavior during Tuesday’s opening statement day of confirmation hearings:
“The rude, disrespectful, and boorish behavior we saw yesterday in the Judiciary Committee was the confirmation hearing equivalent of an ‘Abolish ICE’ protest,” McConnell said on the Floor, adding:
I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised. The antics confirmed two things that our Democratic colleagues have told us before: their minds are already made up about the Kavanaugh nomination, and they will try anything to stop it. Democrats interrupted chairman Grassley scores of times. They treated the nominee rudely, even insulting the patriotism of this devoted public servant and highly esteemed judge. And they offered one stale process complaint after another — completely ignoring the fact that more documentation has been produced for Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination than for the last five Supreme Court nominations combined. I guess our Democratic friends’ coordinated plan was to throw a big pot of spaghetti at the wall and see if anything stuck. Well — nothing stuck. Nothing stuck except the complete contrast between a gracious, thoughtful, patient nominee and the hyperventilating by Senate Democrats, who are obviously not interested in giving Judge Kavanaugh the fair consideration he deserves.
Meanwhile, the ongoing leftist plot orchestrated by Schumer himself and other top Democrats to attempt to derail Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings and process appears to be backfiring on vulnerable Democrat senators up for re-election in 2018. A whopping ten Democrats face re-election this year in states where President Donald Trump defeated failed Democrat candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2016, including several in hotly contested races. GOP candidates in several of those places are pressing their Democrat incumbent opponents on their role in Schumer’s charade. None of them have weighed in yet:
What’s more, McConnell routinely comes under criticism from conservatives and grassroots on other matters, but his bold move here to adjourn the entire U.S. Senate to keep the hearings trudging onward is sure to win him credit from the base at a pivotal point just a couple months ahead of the midterm election.