Cornyn playing key role in wrangling votes for Kavanaugh

WASHINGTON — For six years, as the GOP’s Senate vote counter, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, has had to persuade and cajole to get bills passed.

This week, amid the Republican effort to confirm Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, Cornyn is in a new, higher gear, meeting face to face with senators who are undecided, raising questions on the Senate floor about Kavanaugh's sexual misconduct accusers and taking to Twitter to make the case for a vote by the end of the week.

"A vote against Judge Kavanaugh is a 'yes' vote for more search-and-destroy efforts against public servants and judicial nominees and more ambushing nominees after crucial information is withheld for weeks at a time," Cornyn said Tuesday on the Senate floor.

Cornyn, whose role as Senate majority whip is to wrangle Republican votes, does not typically take an "in your face" approach. As Senate majority leader, future President Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas perfected the "Johnson treatment" of corralling votes by alternately flattering and browbeating members. This is Cornyn’s LBJ moment.

"This is unusual," said Cal Jillson, a Southern Methodist University political science professor, of Cornyn's attack mode. "His specialty is standing over (Senate Majority Leader Mitch) McConnell's shoulder looking serious and thoughtful."

The senior Texas senator, a Senate Judiciary Committee member, unleashed a fusillade of criticism on Democrats during Thursday's Kavanaugh hearing, in which Christine Blasey Ford testified that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were in high school — a charge Kavanaugh vehemently denied — and likened the process to the red-baiting done by discredited U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. Tuesday, Cornyn repeated the McCarthy comparison and ridiculed the focus on Kavanaugh's high school yearbook saying the whole process was a "national embarrassment."

"It is a stain on the reputation and the standing of the United States Senate," Cornyn said. And he kept up the drumbeat on Twitter, defending Kavanaugh's emotional testimony Thursday as a man falsely accused seeking to clear his good name.

"I think Cornyn's profile on the issue reflects his understanding of his voting base and both reflects and reinforces increasing partisan framing of Kavanaugh's nomination,” said James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas. "As things stand at this moment — and of course, they can change — but at the moment, poll numbers show that Republicans support Kavanaugh's confirmation by wide margins."

Cornyn's term as whip, the No. 2 Senate Republican, runs through the end of this year. But he aspires to be Senate majority leader if and when McConnell decides to step aside. McConnell has said that he will keep Cornyn in a senior advisory role in January.

"I would argue that this is the most important vote Cornyn has ever had to whip given the combination of it being one of the most important votes the Senate has cast during his four-year tenure as majority whip as well as the expectation of the vote being extremely close and hinging on the support of a handful of GOP senators who have serious personal and political reservations about confirming Kavanaugh," said Mark Jones, a Rice University political science professor.

Three Republican senators are hold-outs on Kavanaugh: Jeff Flake of Arizona, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

The FBI report on the sexual misconduct allegations against Kavanaugh that Flake insisted on at the last minute in the Judiciary Committee is due Friday, and McConnell said Tuesday that the Senate vote on Kavanaugh would be this week.

"This is ‘big John's’ ride into the sunset on his formal leadership position," said Brandon Rottinghaus, a University of Houston political science professor, of Cornyn, who used "Big, Bad John" in a political ad. "He will need to use all the tools in a whip's arsenal, echoing Lyndon Johnson who created modern party leadership in the Senate: flattery, bargaining, begging, and threats."