The New York Times on Wednesday found the Senate torn apart by the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, and blamed the lack of decorum on -- the Republicans and Brett Kavanaugh, for daring to respond to unsubstantiated accusations of sexual assault and Democratic chicanery.
Reporter Nicholas Fandos tut-tutted under the headline “Kavanaugh Hearing Shows Drift From Decorum.” The text box: “Senate rules meant to place prerogative over partisanship seem lost.”
Fandos bewailed the lost sense of senatorial civility, which conveniently coincided with Republicans and Supreme Court nominee fighting back against an unsubstantiated accusation of sexual assault.
The nomination of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court has exposed just how far the Senate has drifted from the rules of decorum that once elevated senatorial prerogative over party, leaving behind the kind of smash-mouth partisan politics that have long dominated the unruly House.
Senate rules dating back to Thomas Jefferson mandate that lawmakers refer to each other by state and title -- “my good friend, the senator from California” -- and forbid members from questioning motives, maligning a home state or imputing “to another senator or to other senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a senator.” Senators are not even supposed to read a newspaper while another member of the body is speaking on the chamber floor.
A shame the paper sees only offenses on one side of the aisle. The first paragraph is ambivalent, leaving it hard to tell whose side he is taking, but the second paragraph below names and shames two GOP senators, and then, Kavanaugh himself. Meanwhile, the real question about who leaked accuser Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony was waved aside.
With only circumstantial evidence, Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, called for an investigation into whether Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the committee’s ranking Democrat, sat on and then leaked Christine Blasey Ford’s letter accusing Judge Kavanaugh of sexual assault. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, has delivered an escalating series of threats to his Democratic counterparts.
Even the nominee himself threatened Democratic senators, warning, “What goes around comes around.”
By contrast, when Fandos turned briefly to the Democrats, he named no names.
Democrats charged that Republicans are trying to cover up and “plow right through” with the confirmation of a man who has been credibly accused of sexual assault simply in service to power politics. And they were unforgiving in their own assessments, accusing Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, of a “railroad job” to get Judge Kavanaugh through.
Then it was back to blaming the Republicans and Kavanaugh by name for fighting back against sexual assault allegations.
Judge Kavanaugh helped breech the Senate’s own protocols with his lashing performance last week. When two Democratic senators, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, questioned his drinking habits, he tried to turn the tables....
Far from coming to their colleagues’ defense, Republicans pressed on without a mention. They said Judge Kavanaugh’s emotional outbursts were justified given the circumstances, and on Tuesday, Mr. Graham said on Fox News that Ms. Klobuchar should apologize to the nominee “for being part of a smear campaign like I have never seen in 20 years in politics.”
Mr. Cotton joined in, deriding Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, for lying about his service in Vietnam: “Maybe he should reconsider before questioning Judge Kavanaugh’s credibility.”
It was not supposed to be this way, and the rules were supposed to prohibit it.
The double standard is obvious when again he fingers Republican senators by name but doesn’t offend liberals (Sen. Booker? Sen. Hirono? Sen. Harris?) by naming them.
With his departure, and the impending retirements of many of the Senate’s senior-most members in the coming years, it is just as likely that younger lawmakers less interested in compromise -- like Mr. Cotton, Mr. Cruz and their liberal counterparts -- become the norm.
Mr. Coons said he had already heard from Republicans who said they were simply no longer willing to work with certain Democrats.
Wonder why.
Fandos actually praised Sen. Feinstein, in the center of the controversy over who leaked accuser Blasey Ford’s memo.
The differences have been on display throughout Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation process. Ms. Feinstein, at 85 a patrician Democrat who prizes productive relationships with Republicans, has been outflanked by younger members.
