I see what you mean, but as you say their midterm elections are coming up, and no one knows if the Republicans will still have the necessary votes after. If Kavanaugh doesn’t get through, their chance to force someone like him onto the court may go with him. Beyond that I don’t think you can underestimate just how little a lot of senators care about what Kavanaugh did to women in his youth. Chuck Grassley, Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham... they seem like people for whom conscience is just a formality.

Mostly they want to be re-elected, and they want to feed their shrinking base lots of red meat to inspire a bigger turnout. As I said, if Ted Bundy on the court could do that for them, they’d try to make it happen.