Senator Rand Paul – we will remember your vote on Kavanaugh

Senator, you are about to cast one of the most important votes you will ever cast as a senator. You are voting on giving someone a lifetime right to rule on issues that will affect this nation for generations.

And if you vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh, you will have failed your state, your nation, and your legacy.

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Both the nominee, and the process followed to this point, are fatally flawed. The flawed process began with the stealing of a Supreme Court seat by Mitch McConnell. The person who should be sitting in these hearings is Merrick Garland, not Brett Kavanaugh.

The flawed process has continued to the present day, starting with the rush to get the process completed before the mid-terms, even though the “McConnell Rule” says that the Senate should not consider a Supreme Court nominee within a year of an election.

Then there is the withholding of documents by the Republicans and the White House, to hide the work Kavanaugh did in the Bush administration. That work surely included meetings and communication related to justifying torture. No wonder they want to keep it hidden.

How bad is this secrecy, this withholding of documents? For previous nominees, 100% of their paper trail was made available, on a bipartisan basis, to the Senate. In Kavanaugh’s case, it has been a mere 30%.

Then there is the matter of Judge Kavanaugh himself. He would be replacing Justice Kennedy, a well-known swing voter on the court. But Kavanaugh will not be a swing vote; he will be, instead, a Federalist society, right-wing idealogue.

He will become the 5th vote to overturn Roe v Wade. He will take the part of corporations over consumers and workers. He will support the government over citizens when it comes to privacy. He will, in short, dramatically shift the Court, and our nation, further and further to the right – and not the center-right, but the the far, far right.

And let’s not forget that when he was nominated to his current position on the Federal bench, there was so much suspicion that he had lied to the Senate that the matter was referred to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution.

There is no way that a senator with any principles would stand for the process that has brought us here. And there is now way that a senator who cared about women’s rights, or rights to privacy, or the rights of consumers or everyday citizens, would vote for Brett Kavanaugh.

You may think, Senator Paul, that since your term doesn’t end until 2022, that all of us in the state of Kentucky will have forgotten your Kavanaugh vote by the time that election rolls around.

Let me assure you, sir, that the voters of this state will remember this vote, perhaps more than any vote you will take during your term. If you vote to confirm this nominee, after the process your party has forced on the Senate, and after all that has been revealed about his judicial philosophy, not to mention the havoc he will wreak if confirmed, I can guarantee you that we will remember. And we will not let you forget it, either.

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