The Editorial Board

USA TODAY

A brutal and divisive confirmation battle was inevitable the day Justice Anthony Kennedy retired and put the ideological balance of the Supreme Court into play.

But few could have predicted that it would descend into a raw, ugly replay of the 1991 Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas showdown, this one featuring allegations of sexual assault against a nominee in the midst of the #MeToo era.

Just as with Thomas 27 years ago, Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee Friday shrugged off irreconcilable testimony by the nominee, judge Brett Kavanaugh, and his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, about the allegations and approved Kavanaugh’s confirmation, sending it to the Senate floor.

There was one glitch, however, in the Republican plan to ram the nomination through the Senate — and it came from a Republican. Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, while voting to approve Kavanaugh, called for an agreement to pause before a floor vote and give the FBI one week to investigate the allegations against Kavanaugh.

Flake and two other swing vote Republicans, senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, hold outsize power because the Republicans hold only a 51-49 majority in the Senate. By withholding their votes, they could force an investigation. That’s precisely what they should do.

.

OPPOSING VIEW:Time to vote on Kavanaugh. Democrats savage a good man.

The Republican strategy — she says, he denies, let's vote — is indefensible now after Ford's emotional and credible-sounding testimony, along with new allegations against Kavanaugh in the past few days. Nor is a railroaded nomination a responsible way to make a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land.

At this point, Republicans need to listen to Flake and whoever joins him and pause their rush to confirmation to get more questions answered. An investigation by the FBI or special counsels named by Republicans and Democrats would have been better before the committee held its hearing. Witnesses should have been subpoenaed. But an FBI inquiry now is better than a stampede to confirmation. No honest inquiry into Kavanaugh's fitness to serve on the Supreme Court can end without a further search for the truth.

At a minimum, Mark Judge, a high school friend of Kavanaugh whom Ford has alleged was an accomplice and witness to the assault, should be interviewed by the FBI. Judge's lawyer said Friday his client would cooperate.

Investigators should also question two other teenagers identified as guests at the gathering, along with two more women who've made serious sexual misconduct allegations against Kavanaugh this week.

Thursday's historic hearing left lingering questions, despite the adamant stances of both Ford and Kavanaugh.

Ford, her voice quavering and near tears at some points, laid out the now familiar details of her allegation that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a house party when both were teenagers. While some Republicans have floated suggestions that it was someone else whom Ford mistook for Kavanaugh, she asserted she was “100 percent” certain it was Kavanaugh. "Uproarious laughter" by a drunken Kavanaugh and Judge left an "indelible" imprint in her mind, she testified.

If the Republican strategy was to use gaps in Ford’s story — exactly where the party was, how she got there and how she got home — to destroy her credibility, it didn't succeed. As several Democrats said, someone lying would make up a seamless story, not one with questionable holes. At the same time, those holes make it difficult for Kavanaugh to defend himself.

When it was his turn, Kavanaugh largely abandoned the calm, studious demeanor of the earlier hearings. Echoing Thomas' flat denials and "high-tech lynching" claim a generation earlier, Kavanaugh lashed out emotionally at Democrats, accusing them of “lying in wait” with last-minute accusations after he had come through committee hearings largely unscathed and seemingly headed for confirmation.

Kavanaugh, who had been a top deputy in the independent counsel investigation that led to former President Bill Clinton's impeachment trial, accused Democrats of seeking “revenge on behalf of the Clintons.” The Senate's process of "advice and consent" has been replaced with "search and destroy," he said.

While Kavanaugh also put forth a lawyerly defense to Ford’s allegations, his inclination to see the accusation not as a serious charge but as a political "hit job" reinforces concerns that, if confirmed, he would be a partisan first and impartial jurist second.

As the hours dragged on in the Senate hearing room, few new facts were revealed. The Senate and the public were left in the same quandary over who — Ford or Kavanaugh — is speaking the truth. If Ford and the other accusers are not, a distinguished jurist has been smeared. If Kavanaugh is not, it goes directly to his fitness to sit on the Supreme Court.

All the more reason to hit the pause button and gather more information before proceeding.

Yes, further fact-finding might be inconclusive. But a rush to a vote without making further efforts to get to the truth will cast a cloud over the high court, leaving Americans to wonder whether they should trust the decisions justices make about their lives and liberty.

If you can't see this reader poll, please refresh your page.