Last evening, The Hill reported that U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) plans to bring Halil Suleyman (“Sul”) Ozerden back up for a Committee-wide vote this Thursday. Ozerden, who (by pure happenstance!) seems to have had Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney as a groomsman at his 2003 wedding, was announced this past summer by the White House as its pick to fill a long-vacant Mississippi-based seat on the crucial U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. In addition to Mulvaney, Ozerden has the backing of each of Mississippi’s two Republican senators.

Ozerden, who is only a recent convert to Federalist Society membership and whose judicial track record seems scattershot at best, has long faced fairly intensive movement conservative opposition. As I noted last summer in launching my own anti-Ozerden salvo, much of the opposition centers around the 2012 Southern District of Mississippi case of Catholic Diocese of Biloxi v. Sebelius, wherein the eponymous diocese challenged the intrusive and conscience rights-undermining Obamacare contraceptive mandate promulgated by President Barack Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services. Ozerden, then the district court judge presiding over the case, went so far as to deny the diocese’s mere motion for oral argument — thereby treating a Catholic diocese pleading a genuine infringement of its right to conscience in much the same manner as a judge swatting away a pro se prisoner’s filing of a risible habeas corpus petition.

At the time, I urged Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to “lead this battle” and predicted that, “[w]ith Cruz’s leadership, it is hard to see how at least [Sen. Josh] Hawley [(R-MO)] does not follow.” Not to toot my own horn, but that is indeed precisely what happened. Cruz came out in public opposition to Ozerden in early September, and Hawley followed two weeks later. Lacking the votes to pass Ozerden out of the Judiciary Committee with a favorable recommendation, then, Graham tabled a vote on Ozerden’s nomination. And in the time since Graham tabled the Ozerden nomination, furthermore, Eliana Johnson of The Washington Free Beacon broke a scandalous story about Ozerden allegedly once pressuring his wife to make an illegal campaign contribution to then-Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott’s (R-MS) political action committee.

Lacking the Republican votes on the Judiciary Committee and with a genuine scandal garnering headlines in conservative media, it seemed that the Ozerden nomination was heading for a slow but painful death. But rumors started circulating last week that Graham was actively courting Democratic votes on the Judiciary Committee to help favorably pass through Ozerden. Knowledgeable Senate sources confirmed to me this week that Graham planned to try to push through the Ozerden nomination with Democratic votes, and The Hill’s aforementioned report last evening followed. Sources tell me that the Committee Democrat most likely to cross the aisle to vote for Ozerden is either Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) or Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE).

If Graham follows this through to conclusion, let us call this spade a spade: It would be a betrayal of movement conservatism and the coronation of a thoroughly milquetoast, unfit nominee for the Anthony Kennedy-style swing seat on one of the nation’s most influential federal courts of appeal. The Fifth Circuit, which covers the red states of Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, represents the geographical and ideological heartland of post-Reagan conservatism in America. Mississippi, which has two Republican senators, could do a lot better than to nominate a scandal-tied non-movement conservative jurist with an inconsistent judicial track record and an expressed hostility to the foundational issue of religious liberty.

Lindsey Graham should stop what he is doing and not embark upon this path. There is no world in which Democratic votes should be relied upon to pass through a weak nominee who is opposed by large swaths of the conservative movement. Allowing Ozerden to move through would be a tremendous proverbial middle finger to the scores of conservative and religious liberty activists who have opposed his nomination from the get-go.

But if Graham does proceed, then the onus will fall on another courageous Judiciary Committee Republican to join forces with Cruz and Hawley in opposing Ozerden. Perhaps that courageous Judiciary Committee Republican is someone who is allegedly still on the fence, with respect to the Ozerden nomination, and who has a demonstrable track record of defending the interests of religious liberty.

Are you listening, Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE)?