The likely 51–49 for confirmation (with only one dissenting Republican, Lisa Murkowski, voting no, and only one straying Democrat, Joe Manchin, voting yes) was virtually ensured when the Republican Susan Collins of Maine, who is typically depicted as a “moderate,” announced to nobody’s great surprise—because “moderate” is merely her label—that she would toe the party line for Kavanaugh. In the mid-afternoon, she delivered her “yes” speech from a lectern in front of two “yes” women, the Republicans Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi, thus seeking to ensure, via TV optics for the viewers at home, that Kavanaugh’s promotion was not a male-Republican power play.

Indeed, her role was to provide cover for the rest of her caucus. No, she didn’t think Kavanaugh would become the linchpin of a 5–4 majority to overturn Roe v. Wade. He respected judicial precedent too much to do such a thing, she said, and, in fact, “I asked the judge point blank.” And no, she didn’t think that Christine Blasey Ford’s sexual-assault allegation outweighed Kavanaugh’s credentials; in her words, “We must always remember that when passions are most inflamed, fairness is most in jeopardy.” And no, she didn’t believe that a Justice Kavanaugh would rule favorably for President Donald Trump in scandal-related cases that may arise just because he’d been nominated by Trump; she said she’s taking Kavanaugh at his word, based on his “unequivocal” statement that “no president is above the law.”

She was virtually the only Republican to raise that issue, even while trying to defuse it. Until the sexual-assault allegations swamped the news cycle, Kavanaugh’s support for robust presidential power—and, most notably, his wariness of special counsels—was one of the most crucial areas of examination, given the possibility that Robert Mueller could seek to subpoena Trump or take other actions in court. Yet, as a parade of Republican senators stood today to tout Kavanaugh, the issue never came up. They preferred to focus their rhetorical energies elsewhere.

John Cornyn of Texas complained about the Democrats: “Power is so important to some people that they will do anything to get it”—which struck some Democrats as odd, since it was Cornyn and his colleagues who in 2016 refused to grant a hearing to the Barack Obama nominee Merrick Garland, holding him hostage for 293 days, the longest limbo in high-court-nomination history. Cornyn also hailed a Kavanaugh endorsement from the Yale law professor Akhil Amar, omitting the fact that Amar suggested on Septemeber 24 that, in light of the sexual-assault allegations, perhaps Trump should nominate “a back-up candidate.” Cornyn was soon followed by Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who touted Kavanaugh’s endorsement by the American Bar Association—which, earlier in the morning, had belatedly announced that it was “reevaluating” its endorsement based on “new information of a material nature regarding temperament.” And Roy Blunt addressed the Garland matter, insisting that Senate Republicans had tied him up because 2016 was an election year, and that no Court nominee had been confirmed in an election year, with divided government, since 1888. Blunt was factually off by 100 years; the Ronald Reagan nominee Anthony Kennedy sailed through a Democratic Senate in the election year of 1988.