President Donald Trump has no Plan B should his Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh fail to be confirmed by the Senate, it has been revealed.
Those involved in the confirmation process are concerned there is no time to get another judge on the high court before the November election so they are not vetting or preparing another pick, according toAxios.
Plus some want to force Democratic senators running in states Trump won to take a stand on Kavanaugh, voting yes or no so Republicans can make it an election issue.
President Donald Trump has no Plan B should his Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh fail to be confirmed
Brett Kavanaugh is facing an FBI investigation into sexual assault allegations
And the White House has too much invested into Kavanaugh to fall short of confirmation.
‘He’s too big to fail now,’ a senior source involved in the confirmation process told Axios.
‘Our base, our voters, our side, people are so mad,’ the person said. ‘There’s nowhere to go. We’re gonna make them f***ing vote. [Joe] Manchin in West Virginia, in those red states. Joe Donnelly? He said he’s a no? Fine, we’ll see how that goes. There will be a vote on him [Kavanaugh]. … It will be a slugfest of a week.’
Kavanaugh is undergoing an FBI investigation over allegations of sexual assault, which he has denied.
Lawmakers traditionally like to spend most of October in their home states, campaigning for reelection. And with one-third of the Senate on the ballot this November and the government funded through December, lawmakers will be itching to hit the campaign trail.
And the is on Democratic senators running for re-election in states Trump won in 2016.
Those are Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Jon Tester of Michigan, and Claire McCaskill of Missouri.
Manchin and Heitkamp have not said publicly how they will vote on Kavanaugh. Donnelly, Tester and McCaskill have all said they will vote no.
Manchin, Heitkamp and Donnelly were the only Democrats to vote yes on Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch.
‘There’s no time before the [midterm] election to put up a new person,’ a White House official told the news website.
On Saturday, Trump himself said: ‘I don’t need a backup plan.’
Staff are also not working on vetting another nominee and some complaining they couldn’t be sure any male nominated wouldn’t have the ‘Kavanaugh problem.’
‘You nominate any man and how do you guarantee … How do you vet for that?’ said that source. ‘For an accusation that’s 36 years old? You can’t.’
Kavanaugh was accused by Christine Blasey Ford of pinning her to a bed, trying to take off her clothes and covering her mouth when she screamed during a teenage party in the 1980s. He has denied the allegation.
Trump and other Republicans have argued these type of allegations from high school would put a dampening affect on others wanting to be nominated to the federal bench.
‘Everybody wants to be a federal judge,’ Trump said at a press conference last Wednesday. ‘Not just a Supreme Court judge, I’m talking about court of appeals; I’m talking about district court. I don’t think they’re going to want to so much. I’ll be calling people, and we’ll have people calling people that do this. And people are going to be scared.’
The president also noted he had 25 people on his original list to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and all could tell him no out of worries what could come up during a confirmation hearing.
‘I interviewed other great people for this job,’ Trump said. ‘I could conceivably imagine going to one of them and saying, it is too bad what happened to this wonderful man, but I’m going to choose you number two. I want you to go. And I could conceivably be turned down by somebody that desperately wanted this job two months ago.’
There’s been speculation that after the election – should Kavanaugh fail – Trump could name a female nominee, such as Amy Coney Barrett, who was on his original shortlist.
But there are concerns she would be too conservative for GOP Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, moderate Republicans who support abortion rights.
And their votes are necessary.
Given that Republicans hold a 51-seat majority in the Senate, they can only afford to lose one vote if all Democrats vote no.
Those voting dynamics could change after the election, however, either giving the GOP a more comfortable margin or leaving Democrats in control.
The Supreme Court’s new term began Monday
Kavanaugh is facing a sexual assault charge from Christine Blasey Ford
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell recently warned the November midterm election will be ‘very challenging’ forRepublicans and is raising the alarm that they could have difficulty holding onto the Senate.
He noted the ‘wind is going to be in our face’ with several make-or-break Senate races showing the polls are tight.
‘All of them too close to call and every one of them is like a knife fight in an alley,’ McConnell said. ‘It’s just a brawl in every one of those places.’
He acknowledged the historical trend that shows the president’s party often loses control of Capitol Hill in the midterm contest following the president’s election.
‘You can’t repeal history, and almost every election two years into any new administration the party of the presidency loses seats. They don’t always lose the body, but almost always loses seats. And so we know that this is going to be a very challenging election on the Senate side,’ McConnell added.