Kavanaugh’s Future Now Hangs in Balance

Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser now has a name, and the Republican Party’s bid to swiftly lift him onto the US Supreme Court may be spinning out of control.

The coming hours could decide whether the GOP can stabilize the confirmation process of President Donald Trump’s nominee or whether his hopes of being the man to enshrine a conservative majority for a generation could begin to crumble, CNN reported.

California professor Christine Blasey Ford’s emergence sent a jolt through the White House and Capitol Hill on Sunday, prompting demands from Democrats for all votes on Kavanaugh to be put on hold pending an investigation. Even some Republicans conceded the issue needed to be addressed before things go further.

She had accused Kavanaugh last week of sexual misconduct decades ago.

Ford told The Washington Post that she went public because of the magnitude of Kavanaugh’s appointment.

“Now I feel like my civic responsibility is outweighing my anguish and terror about retaliation,” Ford told the paper, ahead of what is likely to be an ordeal characterized by political attacks and fearsome scrutiny of her life, family, mental health and political leanings.

Ford’s gambit looked set to provoke the kind of spectacle triggered by attorney Anita Hill’s harassment claims against Clarence Thomas during his confirmation process in 1991. If so, it will elevate the debate on Kavanaugh from a Washington squabble to a national zeitgeist moment.

The showdown will unfold amid the still-unsettled politics of the #MeToo movement, which has transformed the way allegations by women of sexual harassment by now-powerful men, even from decades ago, are viewed by society.

But it also takes place at a pivotal moment for the conservative movement, which is within reach of a goal it has pursued for decades of cementing a majority on the Supreme Court.

That turbulent backdrop has not, so far, changed the relentless math of the GOP’s Senate majority, but it could significantly increase the political cost to the party of confirming him.