Replacing Anthony Kennedy should have been easy for Republicans. His retirement in June gave the party a historic opportunity: to replace the Supreme Court’s swing justice with a more doctrinaire conservative jurist. The party’s prime directive—to appoint like-minded justices on the highest bench in the land—is what helped President Donald Trump guarantee the GOP’s fealty through every twist and turn of the 2016 election.

All that Trump had to do was select a nominee who would be well qualified for the post, have a relatively minimal paper trail, and have never expressed any views whatsoever on abortion rights. Neil Gorsuch met all these qualifications last year when Trump nominated him to fill the vacancy left by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death in 2016. Senate Democrats cried foul over the Republican blockade of Judge Merrick Garland and raised their usual ideological concerns about conservative Supreme Court nominees, but they otherwise failed to slow Gorsuch’s momentum towards confirmation.

Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation process is turning into a mess by comparison. Americans are less supportive of his elevation to the high court than any successful Supreme Court nominee in the past thirty years. The voluminous paper trail from his six-year tenure in the George W. Bush White House is turning into a political liability. And the GOP’s haste to put him on the court before those records are available gives Democrats the chance to question the process’s legitimacy. The Senate’s narrow Republican majority means Kavanaugh is still more likely to be confirmed than not. But he’s skating closer to thin ice than a nominee in his position should be.

To his credit, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told the president that this could happen. The White House initially settled on four finalists after Kennedy announced his retirement last month, including Kavanaugh. Trump reportedly favored the 53-year-old D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals judge from the start, thanks in part to a nudge from Kennedy himself. (Kavanaugh clerked for Kennedy in the early 1990s.)

McConnell tried to persuade the White House to select from two of the other judges on the shortlist instead. According to The New York Times, the Kentucky senator warned White House Counsel Don McGahn that Kavanaugh’s extensive paper trail would make things more difficult for the Senate compared to other potential selections. Any delays would make it harder for senators to confirm a nominee before the court reconvenes in early October, and a lengthy one could push the process uncomfortably close to the midterm elections in November. Despite these concerns, Trump tapped Kavanaugh for the lifetime appointment.