Lindsey’s Lament: ‘What Kind of Country Have We Become?’

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on Wednesday that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh should get the kind of broad bipartisan support that judges traditionally have enjoyed throughout American history.

But the senator suggested he’d settle for the support President Barack Obama’s nominees received.

“You live in unusual times, as I do. You should get 90 votes, but you won’t,” Graham told Kavanaugh (pictured above center). “And I am sorry it has gotten to where it has. It’s got nothing to do about you.”

Graham is ideally suited to raise the issue. He voted for both Justices Sonia Sotomayor (pictured above right) and Elena Kagan (pictured above left), even though he disagreed with their judicial philosophy. He noted that Sotomayor got 68 votes, and Kagan received 63.

“It’s gonna bother me that you don’t get those numbers,” he said. “But what bothers me is that they should’ve gotten 90. They should have gotten 95. [Retired Justice] Anthony Kennedy got 97.”

Graham expressed disgust with a confirmation process that has included grandstanding by Democratic senators and repeated interruptions from far-Left demonstrators in the hearing room.

“I just wish that we can have a hearing where the nominee’s kids could show up. Is that asking too much?” he said. “So what kind of country have we become? None of this happened just a couple of years ago. It’s getting worse and worse and worse, and all of us have an obligation to try to correct it where we can.”

In fact, Kavanaugh’s two young daughters did attend the hearing but at one point were taken out as a precaution because of the rising tensions caused by the audience protesters. Graham asked the nominee what he told his girls. He responded by telling Graham what they told him.

“They gave me a big hug and said, ‘Good job, Daddy,’” he said. “Margaret made a special trip down and said, ‘Give me a special hug.’”

Graham said Kavanaugh, a Yale Law School graduate and 12-year appeals court judge, is overwhelmingly qualified by any objective measure.

Yet Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) issued a statement signaling his opposition at 9:23 p.m. on July 9 — 23 minutes after President Donald Trump announced him as the nominee.

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) followed at 9:25 p.m. indicating that Kavanaugh posed a “direct and fundamental threat to the health care of hundreds of millions of Americans.”

Sen Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) went on record at 9:55 p.m., followed in short order by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

“All I can say, within an hour and 18 minutes of your nomination, you became the biggest threat to democracy in the eyes of some of the most partisan people in the country, who would hold Kagan and Sotomayor up as highly qualified,” Graham said.

Related: Dems’ Kavanaugh Theatrics an ‘Embarrassment,’ Sanders Says

Graham pointed to his predecessor in the Senate, Strom Thurmond, who voted to confirm Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

“I promise you that when Strom Thurmond voted for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, he did not agree with her judicial philosophy,” he said.

Graham said he realized that when Obama won the 2008 election, he would nominate judges who shared his outlook.

“I expect that to happen. If Donald Trump is president in 2020, he’ll be our next president,” he said. “If it’s somebody else, I expect that to happen. To my colleagues on the other side, what do you really expect? You should celebrate, even though you don’t vote for him [Kavanaugh] — and I don’t know why you wouldn’t — the quality of the man chosen by President Trump.”

(photo credit, homepage and article images: Elena Kagan, CC BY 2.0, by Harvard Law Record)