DeWine Joins Arlen Specter’s Coalition of the Snookered on Kavanaugh

The question is whether there was any need for a second hearing on the judicial nomination of Brett Kavanaugh.

There was supposedly a commitment from Republicans on the Judiciary Committee not to allow this to happen and to have an up-or-down vote out of the committee on Wednesday.

Trouble is “Republican commitment” is an oxymoron in the Senate Judiciary Committee (HT Rush Limbaugh’s site):

Chairman Specter’s stated reason for agreeing to a second hearing is—get this!—that Senator Schumer said that a hearing could be useful in persuading him to vote for Kavanaugh. No sooner had Specter said this than Schumer proceeded to label Kavanaugh a “partisan warrior” and attack his fitness to be a judge. Unless Kavanaugh is lobotomized between now and May 11, there is zero prospect that Schumer will vote for Kavanaugh’s nomination. Expect instead that he and his fellow Democrats will use the hearing to ask invasive questions Kavanaugh can’t possibly answer and to demand sensitive documents that the White House can’t provide—all of which will then set the stage for demands for further delay.

Although it’s tempting to blame Specter for this delay, a committee staffer tells me that Senators Graham and DeWine—members of the Gang of 14—worked hard to persuade Specter that another hearing would ensure that Democrat members of the Gang of 14 wouldn’t support a filibuster. We’ll see.

Why find out? This is not an exercise in conflict-avoidance above all else. If that’s what the Gang of 14 is all about, the nominations backlog will never get cleared out.

I hope this doesn’t end up being the first of gazillion “Don’t blame me, I voted for Pierce” posts.
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UPDATE: Patterico agrees (”Gang of 14 Deal Still Doing Damage”) — “The time to strike is now. Unfortunately, the Gang of 14 deal makes that difficult, because the threat of a filibuster continues to loom over qualified candidates like Kavanaugh.”